On March 1st 1981 the Maze hunger strikes began a battle to be treated as political prisoners.
In total twenty three men joined the hunger strike of which ten consequently died.
To this end, the prisoners had set out Five Demands:
- The right to not wear a prison uniform.
- The right not to do prison work.
- The right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits.
- The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week.
- Full restoration of remission lost through the protest.
And so on March 1st, 1981, former IRA officer and subsequent leader of the hunger strikers Bobby Sands began refusing food.
During his strike and while still imprisoned, Sands was elected as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, subsequently becoming a member of the British House of Commons.
Alongside Bobby Sands nine others also died as a direct result of taking no food. They were:
Francis Hughes, 25, after 59 days; Raymond McCreesh, 24, after 61 days; Patsy O’Hara, 23, after 61 days; Joe McDonnell, 30, after 61 days; Martin Hurson, 29, after 46 days; Kevin Lynch, 25, after 71 days; Kieran Doherty, 25, after 73 days; Thomas McElwee, 23, after 62 days, and; Michael Devine, 27, after 60 days.
The following short film explains what happened and why:
On 5 May, Sands died in the prison hospital on the sixty-sixth day of his hunger strike.
The strike was called off at 3:15 pm on 3 October.. Three days later, the Home Secretary Jim Prior announced partial concessions to the prisoners including the right to wear their own clothes at all times. The only one of the “Five Demands” still outstanding was the right not to do prison work. Following sabotage by the prisoners and the Maze Prison escape in 1983, the prison workshops were closed, effectively granting all of the “Five Demands” but without any formal recognition of political status from the government.
Forty years on the fight for religious, social, political and economic equality remains:
The final words are Bobby Sands:
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