First hunger strike
On 14 September 1976 newly convicted prisoner Kieran Nugent began the blanket protest, in which Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners refused to wear prison uniform and either went naked or fashioned garments from prison blankets.[1] 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 political status by securing what were known as the "Five Demands":
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The right not to wear a prison uniform;
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The right not to do prison work;
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The right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
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The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;
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Full restoration of remission lost through the protest.[2]
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 Tomas O Fiach, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, visited the prison and condemned the conditions there.[3] In 1979, former MP Bernadette McAliskey stood in the election for the European parliament on a platform of support for the protesting prisoners, and won 5.9% of the vote across Northern Ireland, even though Sinn Féin had called for a boycott of this election.[4][5] Shortly after this, the broad-based National H-Block/Armagh Committee was formed, on a platform of support for the Five Demands, with McAliskey as its main spokesperson.[6][7]
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;[8] while loyalist paramilitaries shot and killed a number of activists in the National H-Block/Armagh Committee and badly injured McAliskey and her husband in an attempt on their lives.[9][10]
On 27 October 1980, republican prisoners in HM Prison Maze (alternatively known as "Long Kesh") began a hunger strike. Many prisoners volunteered to be part of the strike, but a total of seven were selected to match the number of men who signed the Easter Proclamation in 1916. The group consisted of IRA members Brendan Hughes, Tommy McKearney, Raymond McCartney, Tom McFeeley, Sean McKenna, Leo Green, and INLA member John Nixon.[11] After a few weeks they were followed by three prisoners in Armagh Women's Prison including Mairéad Farrell, and then a short-lived hunger strike by several dozen more prisoners in HM Prison Maze. In a war of nerves between the IRA leadership and the British government, with McKenna lapsing in and out of a coma and on the brink of death, the government appeared to concede the essence of the prisoners' five demands with a thirty page document detailing a proposed settlement. With the document in transit to Belfast, Hughes took the decision to save McKenna's life and end the strike after 53 days on 18 December.[2]