The summer and fall of 1980 marked a turning point in the protests. In June the European Commission on Human Rights ruled adversely on a case brought before it in which some of the prisoners sought a legal declaration of their "political prisoner" status. The ruling noted simply that this was a status to which they were not entitled "under national law or under the European Convention". Then in September a Welsh Nationalist Party politician threatened to go on hunger strike unless a Welsh language TV station was instituted. The British Cabinet readily agreed to his demand. Desperate to end their own miserable situation and to regain political status no matter the cost, and encouraged by the Welshman's success, the prison leaders decided to fall back on the long-standing Irish tradition of hunger strike.
The use of hunger strikes to achieve political ends reaches far back into Irish culture. Before the Anglo-Norman invasion, under Brehon law, if an injured party had exhausted all other remedies without success, he would sit outside the residence of the accused and begin a fast. This brought the accused under intense public pressure to right whatever wrong he had done, because obviously no one would risk his own death through starvation unless he were the victim of real injustice. If the striker died, the accused would suffer terrible ostracism and would have to pay compensation to the dead person's family. Fasting also had deep roots in Catholicism where it was viewed as a means of self purification that added power to one's prayers.
Irish nationalists first recognized the powerful persuasive potential of these cultural currents soon after the Easter Rebellion. In 1917 republican prisoners in England went on strike seeking treatment as political prisoners. When one of them, Thomas Ashe, died accidentally during a botched attempt to force feed him, he became a notable martyr to the cause. In 1920, Terence McSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, died after 74 days of fasting during the Anglo-Irish War. His famous utterance "It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can suffer the most who will conquer...those whose faith is strong will endure to the end in triumph" had inspired many subsequent hunger strikes including a series of strikes in the Republic of Ireland in the 1930's and 1940's, and intermittent strikes in Northern Ireland and England through the 1970's.
The problem was that hunger strikes were very high risk. Obviously sometimes the strikers' demands were not met, leaving the strikers in the difficult position of having to either continue the strike and starve to death or end the strike and cast doubt on the validity of the goals of the strike. A failed strike could at best be a public relations disaster; at worst it could cause deaths. Fully aware of these risks and after having taken note of the outside leadership's opposition to a hunger strike, Brendan Hughes, the prisoners' leader, decided a strike would go ahead. It was scheduled to begin October 27, 1980 so that it would reach its peak during the Christmas season for maximum propaganda effect.
The strikers had five demands: the right to wear their own clothing; freedom from prison work; freedom of association with fellow prisoners; the right to normal visits and recreational facilities; and restoration of reduction of sentences for good behavior. On October 23 a breakthrough appeared in the works when the authorities offered to allow the prisoners to wear civilian clothes but this collapsed when it turned out to mean prison issued, "civilian type" clothing, not actual personal apparel. Turning over command to Bobby Sands, on October 27 Hughes joined 6 other prisoners on hunger strike.
From the outset Margaret Thatcher, who had become British Prime Minister in May 1979, made it perfectly clear that her government would "never concede political status to the hunger strikers". Her intransigence on this issue had several sources, some personal, some political. In March 1979, shortly before she became PM, one of Thatcher's closest advisors, MP Airey Neave, was killed by a sophisticated booby-trap car bomb in the underground parking garage at Westminster. Then on a single day in late August that year IRA attacks murdered a member of the Royal family, Lord Mountbatten, and his grandson as well 18 British Paratroopers. Thatcher's personal attitude towards Irish nationalists was forever colored by this carnage, but "on principle" she adamantly opposed any concession to the IRA or Sinn Fein which might have given them the slightest political legitimacy or advantage.
Intense negotiations progressed slowly throughout November without result. On December 3, three women prisoners (Mairead Farrell, Mary Doyle, and Mairead Nugent) joined the strike as did 23 men in Long Kesh on December 15. Suddenly on December 18, after getting the grudging agreement from all strikers, Sands and Hughes called off the strike. On that morning the hunger striker Sean McKenna's health had begun to fail rapidly and he was removed to a military hospital. Meanwhile Hughes was informed by the prison authorities that a document from the British Home Office was on its way to Maze and that it would largely meet their five demands. Hughes had sworn to McKenna that he wouldn't let him die if he was convinced their goals had been achieved. With no way to tell how sick McKenna really was, Hughes accepted the prospect of a settlement and called off the strike.
When the document arrived it fell far short of the hunger strikers' demands. It alluded in vague terms to what might happen once the strike ended. The prisoners felt deceived and although publicly Sinn Fein and the IRA put the best face possible on this diplomatic and political defeat, inside the prison the mood was grim. Particularly distraught by what he felt was his personal failure to see through the British duplicity, Bobby Sands immediately began to push for another hunger strike, one that he would lead. He was determined to either succeed in regaining Special Category status for the prisoners or to die. Reluctantly, Sinn Fein and the IRA agreed to a second strike.
Tactics for this strike were a bit different from the first one. Sinn Fein set up a committee headed by Gerry Adams who were to monitor all aspects of the strike including the public and secret negotiations, the public relations impact of the strike as it progressed, the health of the strikers, and the reactions of the strikers' families. Sinn Fein also urged that an absolute limit of four deaths be set since if the British would not agree to terms after four men died it seemed unlikely that any number of dead Irishmen would succeed. Unfortunately this policy was not adopted by the prison leadership, nor were any clear standards articulated by which to judge whether the strike had succeeded, nor was any plan made for how to end the strike. These proved to be costly errors.
Sands began his hunger strike March 1, 1981, the fifth anniversary of the elimination of Special Category status. The dirty protest was called off so all attention would be focused solely on the hunger strike. On March 5 the very popular MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone Frank Maguire died unexpectedly of a sudden heart attack, leaving his seat open in the British parliament. Sinn Fein decided to depart from its policy of not running candidates for election and ran Bobby Sands for the seat; other potential candidates stepped aside so the Catholic vote would not be diluted. While Sands fasted, Sinn Fein conducted his election campaign. On March 15, Francis Hughes joined the hunger strike and on March 16 Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O'Hara began fasting too.
By election day, April 9, Sands was in his 40th day of fasting and had lost 30 pounds. He defeated his opponent Harry West by 1,446 votes. The victory and the international media attention it generated gave a terrific boost to the prisoners' morale. They felt certain that no government, not even one led by Margaret Thatcher, would allow a member of Parliament to starve to death, especially not with all the sudden publicity focused on their cause. They were wrong. At 1:17 a.m. on May 5, 1980 after 66 days without food, MP Bobby Sands died. Next day the speaker of the British parliament announced Sands' death without offering the customary condolences to his family.
Just as massive protests had preceded his death, massive riots followed it. An uneasy peace prevailed for his funeral May 7th. Worldwide TV coverage showed the spectacle of 100,000 mourners, undaunted by the 30,000 security forces on hand, bowed in silence as the coffin of the martyr Bobby Sands passed by. At the grave side armed uniformed IRA men suddenly materialized, fired a volley in memory of their fallen comrade, and disappeared back into the crowd. Back in Maze, the other strikers realized they might be doomed. Thatcher had let an MP die.
Francis Hughes died on May 12th, his 59th day of hunger. On May 21, Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O'Hara both died, 61 days after they started the strike together. As these men died, other prisoners stepped forward to take their places on the hunger strike. The funerals were huge events of mourning that added to the outrage that began to shape up internationally against Thatcher's continued refusal to make any concessions. Pleas for mercy from around the world, from delegations from the Pope, and the European Parliament all appeared to go unheeded.
As the fifth hunger striker Joe Mc Donnell approached death, the Catholic Church stepped up its attempts to find a solution through a Church-sponsored human rights group, the Irish Commission on Justice and Peace. As the hours ticked away on Mc Donnell's life this group along with representatives of the hunger strikers families entered into negotiations with Michael Allison, a senior British official at the Northern Ireland Office. Meanwhile, following a conciliatory statement by the prisoners, the British Foreign Office began secret negotiations with the leadership of the IRA through a contact code-named The Mountain Climber. As the Catholic Church bargained in the full glare of the world's media, the secret contacts in the back streets of Belfast appeared to be making headway. Then on Sunday July 5th, the church negotiators were led to believe they had the basis for a settlement.
This announcement stunned the IRA negotiators for they felt that their contacts with the Mountain Climber were closer to the prisoners' demands and offered the only real hope of a settlement. Gerry Adams summoned two of the members of the church group to a safe house in Belfast and informed them of the progress of the secret talks. On Monday July 6, two Church negotiators, politician Hugh Logue and a priest called Crilly, met the British official Allison and challenged him about the secret negotiations. Allison said he would send a guarantor into the prison to confirm the basis of the secret deal with the prisoners.
By Tuesday July 7, the 45th day of Mc Donnell's hunger strike, the guarantor had still not arrived. The Church negotiators worried about Mc Donnell's health contacted the Northern Ireland Office and warned that if the guarantor did not go into the prison that day they would hold a press conference and detail the terms of the deal to the world. Five minutes before the press conference was due to start the Northern Ireland Office called the negotiators and said the deal document was being drafted and the guarantor would go into the prison. The press conference was called off. The churchmen called the British officials again at 7:15 p.m. and at 8:30 p.m. Both times they were told the guarantor would go into the prison. At 10:15 p.m. Allison called to say no one would be able to go into the prison that night but that the guarantor would go in first thing next morning. The churchmen were also informed by Allison that Mc Donnell was stable. At 4:50 a.m. on the morning of July 8, Joe Mc Donnell died. Both sets of negotiations collapsed.
That day the church commission held a press conference condemning the Northern Ireland Office for "clawing back" the concessions. Michael Allison in reply conceded that he had received medical evidence that Mc Donnell had longer to live, then went on to say that he was not interested in engaging in public exchanges with the Church commission. By then Sinn Fein and the IRA negotiators were more involved in organizing the funeral of the fifth hunger strike death, Joe Mc Donnell. After the traditional IRA volley over his coffin, a British army raiding party made up of tanks, jeeps and helicopters roared to the edge of the crowd to arrest the masked IRA men. A gun battle broke out. One of the IRA men, Gerry Adams brother, was wounded and captured and a ferocious riot broke out among the thousands of mourners.
On July 13 the sixth hunger striker, Martin Hurson died, also after 46 days. With each death the crowds of mourners dwindled. Political commentators and mediators warned the families of the remaining hunger strikers of the growing futility of the protest. One priest in particular, a prison chaplin, Father Denis Faul, worked feverishly to get the families to intervene and put a stop to the strike no matter what the strikers wanted.
The situation had become hopeless. Only the hunger strikers themselves appeared able to end the strike, but none of the strikers was willing to give up simply to save their own lives. They and others had already invested too much for that. Their loyalty to their dead comrades was far more important than their own survival. On July 31, 1981, as Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales married his sweetheart, Lady Diana Spencer, Patrick Quinn age 25 began to enter the final stages of his fast. His mother had had enough. She ordered medical intervention to save his life. To not undermine the strike though, his family issued a public statement stressing that they had acted against Patrick's wishes. Paddy Quinn was transferred from the prison to a military hospital and placed on life support. When he recovered consciousness, his mother asked him, "Now sure Paddy, aren't you glad to be alive today." He replied , "I don't know whether I am or not."
A day later, Kevin Lynch died after fasting 71 days and the day after that Kieran Doherty died after 73 days. On August 8 Tom McElwee died on his 65th day. Finally, on August 30 after 66 days Michael Devine died, becoming the tenth and last hunger striker to die. On the day Devine died, Patrick McGeown's mother intervened. Matthew Devlin's family took him off the strike on September 4.
Five strikers continued fasting until the strike was officially terminated on October 3, but it had simply played itself out long before that. The families became determined to save their sons from a pointless sacrifice and so effectively put a stop to the strike. Never having given in an inch while the strike continued, three days later Thatcher's government announced that prisoners would be allowed to wear their own clothes. Thatcher never made any public concession regarding special status for the prisoners, but in practice all demands were met.
