BACKGROUND:THE FIRST to embark on the 1981 fast to the death was Bobby Sands, leader of the Irish Republican Army inmates at the Maze Prison, Long Kesh, outside Belfast.
The date, March 1st, was the fifth anniversary of the ending of political or “special category” status for paramilitary prisoners.
South Derry IRA activist Francis Hughes joined Sands on the hunger strike on March 15th. He was followed a week later by Raymond McCreesh and the head of the Irish National Liberation Army prisoners, Patsy O’Hara.
The hunger strikers had several demands, chief among them the right to wear their own clothes at all times. A previous fast ended in confusion on December 18th when the prisoners thought they had won this right, but then discovered that the authorities would only permit them to wear officially issued “civilian-type” clothing.
Five days after Sands began his fast, Frank Maguire, Independent MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone and a former IRA prisoner himself, died of a heart attack. In the byelection on April 9th, Sands defeated Official Unionist Harry West by more than 1,400 votes.
On April 20th, Síle de Valera, John O’Connell and Neil Blaney, all of them TDs and MEPs, had a meeting with Sands, now 51 days fasting. Margaret Thatcher said next day that her government would not meet the TDs. “Crime is crime is crime, it is not political.”
There were several other unsuccessful interventions by political and religious.
On May 5th, after 66 days, Bobby Sands MP died in the Maze. His funeral in Belfast was attended by an estimated 100,000 mourners. Hughes died on May 12th after 59 days and McCreesh and O’Hara died on May 21st.
A general election was held in the Republic on June 11th in which two H-Block prisoners, Paddy Agnew and Kieran Doherty, stood.
Doherty died seven weeks later. Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey was replaced as taoiseach by Garret FitzGerald, at the head of a Fine Gael-Labour coalition. A fifth hunger striker, Joe McDonnell, died on July 8th after 61 days.
By the time the fast was called off on October 3rd, 10 prisoners had died. Outside the prison, 69 people had died in that seven-month period.
On October 6th, the new secretary of state James Prior announced a number of changes in prison policy, one of which allowed prisoners to wear their own civilian clothes at all times, but without any formal recognition of political status.
