Hunger Strikes

Can a republican museum in west Belfast help tourists understand the 1981 hunger strikes? And what are Orange and UVF paraphernalia doing there?

The prison’s ‘significant location’ could yield £250m in private investment, but will turning it into a shopping mall eradicate its historical significance?

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

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 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

News reports and an editorial from March 2nd and March 3rd, 1981

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The strikes filled column inches at home and abroad but their impact and legacy cannot be easily or neatly defined

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

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

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

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

The first hunger strike and its collapse: first save lives, then save face. F Stuart Ross, author of Smashing H-Block, sheds light on a high-risk strategy and its repercussions

Armagh women’s prison protests promoted feminism within the republican movement and challenged sexist attitudes, but women’s issues were not a priority for Sinn Fein

In his prison writings Adams offered a subtle critique of the spiritual, sacrificial strand of republicanism which had dominated republican discourse for decades since 1916