The IRA hunger strikes
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2021
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1981 the British government was faced with prisoners dying on hunger strike in a jail in Northern Ireland. The Irish republican activists were demanding to be treated as political prisoners not criminals. Several of them died during the hunger strike, the first, Bobby Sands on May 5th 1981. Louise Hidalgo spoke to Laurence McKeown who took part in the protest but survived.
(Photo: Protestors wearing balaclavas in support of the hunger strike. Credit: AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. This is the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:45.0 | I'm Louis Adalgo and today I'm bringing you a program from our archives |
| 0:49.0 | about the period known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland. On the 5th of May, 1981, an Irish |
| 0:56.0 | Republican prisoner, Bobby Sands, died whilst on hunger strike in a British jail |
| 1:01.1 | in Northern Ireland called the May's prison. |
| 1:03.5 | He was the first of a series of inmates to die. |
| 1:07.0 | Republican prisoners had announced the hunger strike in February 1981. |
| 1:11.0 | They were demanding to be recognized as political prisoners and not criminals. |
| 1:15.0 | Back in 2010 I spoke to one of those hunger strikers, Lawrence McEwen. |
| 1:20.0 | There was no sort of third way, Louisa was at our total capitulation to the prison system |
| 1:25.0 | and be criminalised, which we refused to be, |
| 1:27.1 | or hunger strike and in that sense. |
| 1:30.2 | It was undoubtedly this time someone would die. |
| 1:32.8 | The IRA prisoners in the maze had already held what was called a dirty protest, |
| 1:37.1 | refusing to wear prison clothes and smearing the walls of their cells with excrement. |
| 1:42.1 | They wanted to be recognized as political prisoners not |
| 1:44.9 | criminals and they'd held one hunger strike already, but they'd called it off when they |
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