How The Irish Times reported end of 1981 hunger strikes
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.
Time to stop force-feeding us a male cultural history
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
Bobby Sands’ bed and Long Kesh/Maze’s afterlife
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
Still rethinking the 1980/’81 hunger strikes
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
Charles Haughey and the hunger strikes: ‘a political disaster’
Despite his reputation as a firebrand nationalist, Haughey broadly endorsed Margaret Thatcher’s policies and opposed the strikers’ ‘five demands’ - until he left office
The BBC and the hunger strikes
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
Suicide or self-sacrifice: Catholics debate hunger strikes
The hunger strikes divided the Catholic Church along national lines, with the Irish hierarchy taking a markedly different approach to their English counterparts
A prisoner of its past? The future of the Long Kesh/Maze
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
Why H-Block hunger strikers were not force-fed
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
Hunger strikes and politics of republican memory: complex and contested legacies
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
Militant loyalism and the hunger strikes
The prison protests had a mixed effect on loyalist paramilitaries, driving some towards politics and galvanising others into an even greater killing spree
‘The hunger strike terrorists’: The British press and the hunger strikes
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
Carved in time: the craftwork legacy of the hunger strikes
Throughout the Troubles a wide range of craftwork was manufactured by prisoners, much of which remains today as powerful material reminders of its time
The Chilean Bobby Sands: a protest poem by Carmen Berenguer
‘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
Hunger strikes put in context: a visit to Irish Republican History Museum
Can a republican museum in west Belfast help tourists understand the 1981 hunger strikes? And what are Orange and UVF paraphernalia doing there?
Redeveloping the Long Kesh/Maze prison: profiting from the hunger strikes?
The prison’s ‘significant location’ could yield £250m in private investment, but will turning it into a shopping mall eradicate its historical significance?
Emaciating machismo: masculinity, murals and memorialising hunger strikes
The emaciated, gaunt, sometimes twisted bodies of hunger strikers challenged the fantasy of the macho warrior by depicting the consequences of war on the male body
The Irish in Britain, the British Labour movement and the hunger strikes
No ‘horde of proletarian Irish’ rose up in support of the hunger strikers on British streets, and IRA violence limited support among trade unionists and in Labour party
‘The Men of Art have lost their heart’: poetry and the hunger strikes
The duty of the poet to respond is felt in the poetry of the hunger strikes, but only in the best poetry do the subtleties of that duty, and the subtleties of history, take prominence
From the archive: how The Irish Times reported the hunger strike
News reports and an editorial from March 2nd and March 3rd, 1981
Photographing the hunger strikes
The hunger strikes were a media event, which gained their momentum and meaning through the mobilisation of public opinion via the dissemination of tokens and images
Keeping the lid on a boiling pot: the Irish government and the hunger strikes
Dublin, fearful of the strong emotions hunger strikes aroused but opposed to ‘political status’, sought a ‘humanitarian’ solution that would limit support for Sinn Féin
The Prisons Memory Archive: Representing the Troubles
A collection of 175 filmed walk-and-talk interviews back inside Armagh Gaol and the Long Kesh/Maze, seeks to address a conflicted past in a contested present
Anger, opportunism, grudging respect: how unionism reacted to hunger strikes
While unionist leaders resented the propaganda value of the hunger strikes, loyalists were conflicted as their prisoners had also fasted and sought the same demands
Hunger strikes and teenage angst – the world of @NrnIrnGirl1981
When Bronagh McAtasney from Newry found her 1981 teenage diary she began tweeting bits every day, capturing what life was like back then and captivating readers
Rethinking the 1980/1981 hunger strikes
A hunger strike began 35 years ago today which led to many deaths but set Sinn Féin on a path to peace and power-sharing. Academics will explore this legacy in The Irish Times over coming months ahead of a major symposium in London next summer
A contested past: the histories of the 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes
We still lack a hunger strike history that incorporates all available sources. Our project seeks to address this deficiency by assembling scholars from disparate fields
Maggie Scull: Republicans and historians remain divided over hunger strikes
The strikes filled column inches at home and abroad but their impact and legacy cannot be easily or neatly defined
‘A few lousy hours’: time pressure in the 1980 hunger strike
As hunger striker Sean McKenna neared death, the IRA leadership blinked first, but the knowledge that the British had been open to concessions informed the second strike
From the archive: Documents reveal no major concessions
In The Irish Times on December 19th, 1980, David McKittrick and Fionnuala O Connor analyse British documents on a revised prison regime given to them by IRA sources
From the archive: Starving to death – what it really means and how it was avoided
In The Irish Times on December 20th, 1980, David McKittrick explained the physical effects of a hunger strike and how British proposals swayed prisoners to end the strike
From the archive: Hunger-strike over
In this front-page article from December 19th, 1980, The Irish Times Northern Editor David McKittrick reports on the end of the 53-day hunger strike by seven republicans
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