This is the story of the 1981 Hunger Strike told chronologically through the pages of An Phoblacht/Republican News.
The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest by Irish republican prisoners. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976 when the British government withdrew Special Category Status (prisoner of war rather than criminal status) for convicted paramilitary prisoners. In 1978, the dispute escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to leave their cells to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement. In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike, which ended after 53 days.
The second hunger strike began on 1 March 1981, when Bobby Sands, the IRA’s former officer commanding (OC) in the prison, refused food. The date was deliberately chosen as the fifth anniversary of the withdrawal of status. A statement from the prisoners was issued by Danny Morrison, Sinn Féin’s publicity director:
We have asserted that we are political prisoners and everything about our country, our arrests, interrogations, trials, and prison conditions, show that we are politically motivated and not motivated by selfish reasons or for selfish ends. As further demonstration of our selflessness and the justness of our cause a number of our comrades, beginning today with Bobby Sands, will hunger-strike to the death unless the British government abandons its criminalization policy and meets our demand for political status.
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