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Description Bobby Sands and the other H block protestors. Provisional IRA and INLA prisoners (the first was Ciarán Nugent) began the blanket protest in which prisoners would refuse Bobby Sands and the other H block protestors.Provisional IRA and INLA prisoners (the first was Ciarán Nugent) began the blanket protest in which prisoners would refuse to wear prison uniform and either went naked or fashioned garments from prison blankets. 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 privileges by securing what were known as the "Five Demands":The right not to wear a prison uniform; The right not to do prison work; The right of free association with other prisoners; The right to organise their own educational and recreational facilities; The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week. On March 1, 1981, under the new PIRA Officer Commanding in Long Kesh, Bobby Sands, a second hunger strike began, with Sands himself the first to refuse food. The political atmosphere outside the prisons became electric, all over Ireland, with widespread rioting in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland.Shortly after the beginning of the strike, the independent Irish republican MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone died and precipitated a high profile by-election. Sands was nominated as an Anti H-Block candidate, and was elected to the House of Commons on April 9, 1981 with 30,492 votes to 29,046 for the Ulster Unionist Party candidate Harry West.Three weeks later, Sands died from starvation in the prison hospital. The announcement of his death prompted several days of riots in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. Over 100,000 people lined the route of his funeral.Over the summer, nine more hunger strikers also died. The names of these people, their paramiltary affiliation, hometown, dates of death, and length of hunger strike are as follows:Bobby Sands, Provisional IRA, Belfast (Twinbrook), 5 May, 66 days Francis Hughes, PIRA, Bellaghy, 12 May, 59 days Patsy O'Hara, INLA, Derry, 21 May, 61 days Raymond McCreesh, PIRA, Camlough, 21 May, 61 days Joe McDonnell, PIRA, Belfast (Lenadoon), 8 July, 61 days Martin Hurson, PIRA, Cappagh, 13 July, 46 days Kevin Lynch, INLA, Dungiven, 1 August, 71 days Kieran Doherty, PIRA, Belfast (Andersonstown), 2 August, 73 days Thomas McElwee, PIRA, Bellaghy, 8 August, 62 days Michael Devine, INLA, Derry, 20 August, 60 days There was extensive international condemnation of Britain's handling of the hunger strikes. As a direct consequence, Sinn Féin emerged as a serious political force in the 1982 elections to the Prior Assembly and the 1983 general election. Thereby, it indirectly paved the way for the Good Friday Agreement many years later. |
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