Politics and the Two Irelands

Extract

Late last year the British Government emerged with its principles intact from a contest of wills with a Provisional IRA hunger-striker who sought changes in the prison treatment of those claiming political motivations for their acts of violence. When the hunger-striker broke his fast, it appeared that the British policy was vindicated. But as usual in Northern Ireland, the ascendency of British law and order did not go untested for long. In the spring of 1981 the Ulster situation erupted again when another IRA hunger-striker induced his own death after failing to produce any modification of prison rules. Although the Thatcher government had held firm once again, the tradition of Irish self-sacrifice was reborn. Bobby Sands, M.P., became the thirteenth Republican prisoner since 1920 to die on a hunger strike in jail, the first in the Republic itself.