What were the IRA hunger strikes?

the recent elections across the pond there. Okay, I'm not familiar with what happened. Well, the shin fain Uh is now in place as the largest party INO in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, and this means that like this is probably the best chance they've had in a long time for reuniting Ireland. Oh wow, that'd be something. Wow, you really did save it for just the right right moment, Chuck.

You know, it's just a couple of weeks ago and I read a bunch of articles on it on the likelihood and it seems um it seems like a hard road still, but they definitely is. It's something they're interested in I think that party that is, and polls are very split. Yeah, I'm I'm interested to see how it turns out. But that is pretty interesting that they're they're finally in a position to do that, because that means they've come a very long way in the last what

fifty or so years um. For those of you who aren't familiar, shin Fan is considered the political wing of

the Irish Republican Army. And the reason we're talking about either one of those is because we're talking about hunger strikes, specifically a set of hunger strikes that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century and then towards the end of the twentieth century, and they are very much associated with the I r A. In fact, if you ask most people who are familiar with hunger strikes, they will probably bring up the I ra A. It's like

that closely associated with them. Yeah, and you know, we should just say we're we're gonna do our best to get this right, but this is one of those that is, you know, it's so fraught with emotion um on both sides. So we just want to tell all of our friends in Northern Ireland and all of our friends in the Irish Republic that we were doing our best here, just two Americans trying to understand a very deeply, long rooted,

oftentimes hostile situation. And for those of you, like Morrissey with Irish blood but English heart, um, we will hopefully not tick you off either. We're doing our best here, just a couple of Yankee American Joe's doing what we can. That's right. And we had a great time, by the way in Dublin, and our only regret was not being able to go and do a live show in Northern Ireland, which I couldn't squeeze it in, but we'd love to

check it out one day, agreed. So you said that, like, this is a very emotionally fraught subject, and that is a gross understatement really, because um, what we're gonna focus on are called the troubles, which started at the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, but um, really it goes back even further than that, and uh, you can kind of place the beginning of hostilities in sixteen o nine when the Protestant English came into Catholic

Ireland and said, hey, we're gonna take some of this land, and we're going to take some of your land rights away from those of you with documented land rights, and we're going to set up some English enclaves and we're just going to basically show up and and sit here for a while. And that didn't sit very well with um, the ethnic Irish or Gaelic people who lived in the area. So that was one part of it. And I also hit on another part two, Chuck, that we've got Protestant

and Catholic basically versus each other. Now, yeah, and you know, I think Ed makes a good point that it's it's not strictly about religion, but when you're over there and you're talking Catholic and Protestant, it's so intertwined in the fabric of kind of everything that goes on, including the politics, that it's really, you know, there's no way you can separate it. But it wasn't necessarily uh an Irish or a well, I guess Irish Catholic, English Scottish Protestant battle,

but it is the seeds are there. So in particular in the North of Ireland around Ulster, a bunch of Protestant English and Scottish people kind of settled there over the years and Um formed what's basically known or what

was known as the plantation of ulster Um. And so over time you've got this largely Gaelic population inhabiting the central and south part of Ireland and then a mixed Catholic Gaelic and um English and Scottish Protestant kind of group coexisting for better for worse in the northern part of the country. And it's remarkable that it lasted like this for you know, several centuries before it finally came

to a head at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yeah, and as far as you know, how those people in Northern Ireland that were that were kind of you know, mixed in together felt about things then and how they feel about things now, you know, Ed makes some kind of sweeping statements that it's it's just kind of hard to do, especially when you look at like modern day

polls on reunification and stuff like that. Those seeds run deep and people are still kind of divided on it, so you can't necessarily just say that, you know, these days the people in Northern Ireland favor Protestantism and want to be a part of the UK it's it's a mixed bag, right, Yeah, I would guess to be akin to UM, you know, people wanting to their state to secede, or the United States to break into five different countries or something like that, although UM probably with much much

more emotional opinions about that. And then throw religion in there, exactly just that little light thing. So, like I said, this, this kind of precarious living situations living arrangement came to a head UM all the way in nineteen twelve when Irish nationalists kind of movement UM began. I think they started before that, but in nineteen twelves they started really pushing for Home rule, which is Irish um governing Ireland.

It's pretty much as simple as that, UM. And that created the Home Rule crisis, and it was a crisis as far as the British were concerned, because all of a sudden, they're Irish people were saying, hey, we we basically want you out and we want to rule Ireland. So let's just end the four centuries of occupation, shall we. The way you put it there just sounds very nice. Yeah, I'm sure that's how they put in. Uh. This was sort of put off a bit by World War One.

Obviously that kind of disrupted a lot of things. But eventually, in nineteen sixteen, the Nationalists did revolt and it was called the Easter Rising of nineteen sixteen. And this was a bloody affair. It was I mean, I think there were more than a dozen leaders executed, many thousands of people in prison. It was just a it was a brutal conflict. Uh, And that was just you know, that

kind of kick things off in nineteen sixteen. It continued again in nineteen nineteen with what we know now is the well, I guess what was called this then too, the Anglo Irish War. And there were a lot of sort of governmental policies going on during this time. The Government of Ireland Act of nineteen twenty officially, as far as they were concerned, created two Ireland's Northern Ireland and what they called Southern Ireland that we're all still under

the rule of the UK and Great Britain. But Southern Ireland was like, no, we're not. What is Southern Ireland where the Irish Republic like, don't even call a Southern Ireland. Um. So that actually kind of got translated into a treaty UM that ended the Anglo Irish War. It was the treaty that basically recognized Ireland as two separate nations. You've got Ireland itself, which is again the central and southern part of the country, and then you have Northern Ireland,

which is part of the United Kingdom. It's a totally different country, um, at least geo politically speaking, it's a totally different country. And again there's a big distinction between Ireland and Northern Ireland and the population makeup because those Protestant, Catholic and Scottish people that settled in the northern part

of Ireland over the centuries had um descendants. In those descendants stayed um loyal to the Crown, they stayed Protestant, and at times they they were more powerful than their Catholic neighbors. So in the late sixties, by the time the late sixties roll around and you've got to Ireland's you have a Protestant elite, small minority of Protestants ruling Northern Ireland, much to the chagrin of the Catholic Um

Gaelic people who lived there. Uh. And that kind of set up there set the stage I guess for the troubles that followed, yeah, and the troubles uh, and then he said began in the late sixties. They carried through till about nine more than I mean, the numbers kind of very depending on you know, what you're looking at, but at least thirty five hundred people died, fifty percent of which were civilians. And these were you know, it

was a mess. There were paramilitary groups on both sides, there were British military taking part, there were street battles, there were bombings. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that in the like when you and I were growing up in the seventies and eighties, you know, this was all over the news at the time, and it

was I had no idea. I didn't understand it at all at the time, and it took you know, me listening to a lot of you two and then trying to educate myself over what was going on over the years. But I don't think I fully really understood it until like the past few days, when I really dug in absolutely same here man. So one of the things that kicked off those troubles you just described, um, was the the Gaelic Catholics protesting the unfair rule as they saw

of the Protestant minority. And the problem is these protests were kind of suppressed brutally by the Protestant government and with the aid of the British military, British um police, I believe, and that's that turned quickly into rioting and then eventually, like you said, the paramilitary groups assembling and

basically guerrilla warfare breaking out in Northern Ireland. So imagine like, you know, going to work one day and you're Catholic and your co workers Protestant, and the next day you guys are fighting each other on the street, um for control of of your both of your country. Yeah, it's it's it's nuts to think about it as an American because like we can't fathom something like that, you know, to Gen xers growing up in the in the Cold War Reagan era, right, I mean, we're pretty far removed

from the Civil War here in the United States. This is like civil war that took place in the early seventies or started in the early seventies and continued for almost thirty years. Yeah, and previous you know, we should back up a little bit, I guess and talk about the origins of the ira Uh. This had to do with the Easter Rising that we talked about of nineteen sixteen.

It was initiated by what was called the Irish Volunteers UH in nineteen sixteen, and by the twenties they were known as the i RA, a UH Irish Republican Army, and they fought a civil war in the early nineteen twenties. In the nine nineteen twenty three there were a lot of different nationalist factions fighting one another. One of these was the IRA, and there was civil war going on

back then as well. So there's just been decades and decades of unrest by the time the nineteen sixties roll around, Yeah, and that nineteen twenties civil war um was in Ireland itself. So after it became a sovereign nation, all those groups that had fought the British started fighting each other to figure out who was going to run the show from

then on. So the IRA that you and I think about, UM, that you know, we learned about from you two and the news and the eighties and all that, Um, they're the ones that you would call the provisional IRA, and they formed out of the beginning of the troubles, those protests and riots beginning in nineteen sixty nine. They were one of the paramilitary groups that developed and they became UM pretty famous in no small part because of the hunger strikes they ended up carrying out. Should we take

a break? I think so, I think we've reached breakness. I know, the nerves that was nervous during that setup. Were you You thought I was just gonna keep going and going. No, No, not that. I was just like, man, this stuff is so you know, there's there are fine lines, and I just don't want to misspeak. Oh I don't think we did. But now that I just said that,

of course we did. All right, Well, we'll gather ourselves and we'll be right back to talk about the history of hunger strikes a little bit right after this, Okay, Chuck. So why would anybody engage in a hunger strike and why would they be most closely related or thought of, um, in relation to the I R A. Well, uh, you know, there is some evidence that they were rooted in Celtic tradition, UM,

hundreds of years ago. There were you know, there were stories of people undergoing hunger strikes and it might you know, it wasn't necessarily political at the time. So how it would go down is like maybe somebody owed you money and wouldn't give it to you, so you would go very publicly to where they live, camp out on their

doorstep and engage in a hunger strike. And it was sort of just a very public display of you know, maybe you didn't have means to get it any other way, so it was a very public display and way of saying, this person is doing me wrong and I am out here like starving myself. Pay attention, right. It was so

common it was actually written into Gaelic law. I was called the troupes cad or trust God, I'm going with trups cad um, and it was it was the concept of hospitality in Ireland among the Gaelic people was so strong that, um, it was just unthinkable to let somebody starve on your doorstep. So it was really kind of playing on two things. It was drawing attention to somebody, and then it was also showing what a terrible person they were for letting this person starve on their doorstep.

The thing is this is real, that really happened, Like it's it comes up in some of the um epics from the Gaelic culture, and like it's documented that it was a real thing. But what's not documented is it's linked to the I r A hunger strikes of the beginning of the twentieth century and then towards the end of the twentieth century. Because nobody involved in those ever said I'm I'm doing I'm pulling a trop scad um.

They didn't link it to it, but you could make a case that it was kind of like in the culture to think of doing something like that, because it had been around for hundreds of years. Yeah, I think that's fair to say. And you know, it continued, like in the early nineteen hundreds, there were how are you saying at suffragettes, suffragists, suffrage suffragists. Yeah, like how you call a female or male server a server, a female or male actor and actor? We don't do, you know.

I know that David Bowie song always confuses me, though, well, it's a good song and it should remain. But they would undergo hunger strikes, but they would bring in sort of like religious iconography sometimes and sort of paint themselves as martyrs. They would invoke the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc and stuff like that. And again, this is

not exactly the same thing. But this is just to say that in the early nineteen hundreds there were, uh, there were women in Ireland that were undergoing these hunger strikes. They also happened in Russia, and I think they called some of these like the Russian method. Uh. They would get there, they would do this reverse like force feeding, like reverse stomach bumping to force feed some of these people. Um.

Sometimes that would killed them. So it was it was just a nasty way to draw attention, and the way that it was countered was also nasty. Yeah. So the first i RA members to hunger strike want to go on hunger strike, um, were inspired by the suffragists um, who were sometimes in the same prison as them. The first ira A member to do it was James Connolly, who went on hunger strike in and was actually released

from prison as a result. UM. And then a few years later, UM, the case of Thomas Ash drew national and I think maybe even international attention because he went on hunger strike and they accidentally killed him when they tried to force feed him. Yeah, they pumped milk and eggs into his lungs by accident, which is uh, I mean, it's hard to think of like what kind of an awful death after you're already starving yourself. Uh. And we

should also point out to that. Another similarity that they had with these original early nineteen hundreds suffragists with their hunger strikes is they were and this is a very key thing for what ended up being, you know, the hunger strikes in the nineteen eighties that we're going to talk about in a bit, But they one of their main aims was to be looked at as political prisoners

and not criminal prisoners. Yeah. That was a big ongoing thread throughout all of this, starting with the suffragists and then all the way into the eighties with modern IRA. So um, I mean, should we talk about that for

a minute? Yeah, sure, Well, you know, there's a huge difference in being viewed as a criminal and wearing prisoners clothing and having a prisoners rights which are to say, like criminal prisoners rights which are to say, not very many, and what they were fighting for and what the the I r. A Was later fighting for in the eighties and the seventies, which was we're political prisoners. We want to be able, we don't want to look like common criminals.

We want to wear our own clothes. We want to be able to uh, to associate with with each other and walk about, um outside of ourselves and congregate. And in nineteen seventy six, you know, they allowed this for a while, but nineteen seventy six of British government said no, we're going to treat you like your terrorists and like your common criminals. And you've got to wear these You can't congregate anymore. You've got to wear, you know, uh, a prisoners jumpsuit. And this was a big, big deal.

It really was for a number of reasons. One UM, the reason why the Brits said we're not going to recognize you as political prisoners was because they had at first um and they decided that this was generating too much sympathy and legitimizing the i r A and its struggle for Irish independence way too much, and by casting them as criminals rather than political prisoners, they were saying like, hey, these people are dangerous, their thugs, they're terrorists, and you

should be on the side of us, the Brits and the Protestants who are cleaning up the streets and getting these people off the streets and into jail. So it wasn't just the way your day to day life panned out in prison. It was also like the larger public perception a battle for that that was going on that both sides were really entrenched in their way of thinking

with that. Well, yeah, and that's the reason a hunger strike in the case of the IRA was, or could be at least very effective as a pr tool, because a common criminal prisoner is it going to literally starve themselves to death for a cause. So on one hand you have the British government saying, you know, we're not going to recognize you, you're just terrorists. On the other hand, you've got the i ra A starving themselves to death, Uh,

fighting for rights to where their own clothing. I think, Uh, this one thing you sent me said as far as their them congregating, is that in prison they just saw

that as another I ra A headquarters. Basically. Yeah, they did a lot of strategizing in the early seventies and they were able to chuck because of something called um Operation Demetrius, and that was something that the British Army carried out in one and it ended up backfiring because it generated a tremendous amount of public sympathy for the i r A and its movement um because the British Army just started rounding up suspected members of the i r A and put them in what amounted to a

prisoner of war camp um. There was no due process, they didn't get to plead their case in front of a judge if they accidentally got scooped up, and they really had nothing to do with the I RA A t s. There was no recourse for getting out of there, and they set up the Brits set up a prisoner of war camp um in Northern Ireland to hold I think hundreds and hundreds of of prisoners starting in UM one, and it really really rubbed the public the wrong way

because it's nineteen seventy one. You know, this isn't like the seventeenth century all over again. It's one and they're rounding people up and holding them in prisoners of prisoner of war camps um against Theirwell that's crazy. Yeah. So you know, a hunger strike could be a pretty effective

way to draw attention to this. Uh you know. Ed points out a few um things about hunger strikes that could make it more effective, which is obviously to do it as a collective action is a much stronger message that you're sending than any individual. Um. So if you have a group with a political cause, you're gonna get

more attention. Um. You know, it casts the prison officials in a light of which they're either allowing these people to starve to death, which is, you know, a monstrous thing to do, or they're forced feeding them, which sometimes kills them, which is a monstrous thing to do. And

you know, your body basically shuts down. I think we've talked about starvation and other episodes before, but you know, your body uses up your fat stores and once that's gone, once that's gone, it starts literally like eating at your muscle, eating at your internal organs, and between you know, forty and seventy something days, your your body is going to finally succumb to organ failure and you're gonna die. Yeah. Um yeah, once your once your body starts eating its

own organs, you're in trouble. And even if you managed to survive the um, the hunger strike, um, you probably have done some serious permanent damage to yourself. So so, like we were saying, after Operation Demetrius, right, they rounded up a bunch of suspected ira A members treated them as prisoners of war. But at the same time they were also busting other ira A leaders with legitimate and

legitimate criminal acts like gun possession things like that. So you had two groups of i ra A prisoners being treated separately, the ones in the interment camp being treated like political prisoners or prisoners of war, and then the ones in the jail being treated like common criminals. So to kind of get the same treatment in the jail as the political prisoners in the pow camps were given. A guy named Billy McKee who was an i ra

A leader. Um, stage the first modern hunger strike in nineteen seventy two, that's right, and um it was an effective strategy for about four years. But this was right at that time. I think it was VY six when they had that shift from recognizing them as political prisoners to uh just you know, criminal prisoners. So this was pre that time and kind of led up to that shift. Yeah. And then, um, so you've got the criminalization campaign being carried out by the Brits and the Protestants in Northern

Ireland who were running the government. Um, and remember it has a twofold effect, like you can no longer congregate, you can no longer strategize. We're no longer going to recognize your hierarchy of ranks, um, and just deal with your leaders like you're just a common criminal now. And it also turned the tables on the ira A prisoners, who had formerly been treated with general respect by the guards.

The guards were let loose on these people, UM, and it led to a really horrible time to be an ira A prisoner because it's almost like there was pin up rage or something among the guards and they just released it on the prisoners. They poured scalding water on them, they hosed them down with um cold water hoses in winter time. UM. They they beat them regularly and routinely,

and again they were treated as common criminals. And uh, it was a from what I can tell, from about nineteen seventies, six to night one was about as bad a time as you could be an ira A prisoner as there ever was. Yeah, we'll take a break in a sec but before we do, I do want to mention the movie that I watched today because I figured there was probably a movie about this. UM. Steve McQueen, the director that did Twelve Years of Slave and shame

directed the movie, his first movie actually directed. Huh was it an infomaniac? You watched? No? No, no, that wasn't him. Oh wait was that that? No? That thin? Yeah, but he did one where um Fossbender is a sex addict. Right, that's shame, Okay, Shane, That's what I meant, is that what you watched? No, no, no, that's not watched. You're like, what when's the Hunger striking to start? Uh? It was his first movie from two thousand and eight, also with

Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands who will you know? Get to after the Break, But it was called Hunger and boy oh boy. Uh. I recommend it in one sense and that it was a powerful film. Um, but it was hard to watch, my friend, I can't imagine. It was brutal. Um, it's a very The way he structures it is sort of a kind of a non traditional narrative. It's not like a traditional biopic that you would expect.

It's a very quiet, not a lot of dialogue. Um, it's only ninety six minutes long, but it's a very

slow paced film. But just a really I mean, I get the sense that it was a really realistic depiction of those years that were you were talking about between seventy six and eighty one, and these guys were just brutalized, man, they were uh, Like they would call in the riot squad and basically open the cells and throw their naked bodies into the hallway and beat them with batons and like like cut off their hair and their beards like until they were bloody. And it was it was a

very very tough movie to watch. And at the Hunger Strike part of it is only like the last twenty minutes or so of the film. The whole first part is just sort of the conditions in prison, uh, and what's going on. So I recommend it on one hand, it is not for the faint of heart. But we'll kind of take a break now and we'll talk about what else is going on in the prisons in right after this, all right, so uh, in the film and in real life, in fact, this is how the film

starts out. Is the first prisoner that comes in refuses his prison clothes, and that's what started the blanket protests when they were basically like, I'm not gonna wear your common criminal outfit, and they basically said okay, well, you're just gonna be naked seven for years, and here's your blanket, and that's that's going to be your clothing. And that's

what they did. It's called the blanket protests. That first prisoner under this new criminalization scheme said, you know, final, just wear a blanket, and like, in very short order, I think four hundred other Iria prisoners did the same thing. It's called the blanket protest. They were all just naked in the movie the whole time where they really have you seen the new Kids in the Hall? I haven't yet.

I'm dying too though, the naked the whole time. No, but in in some places and it's like, wow, it's pretty hilarious. Yeah, And I have to say I think they're they're better then they were in the first go round. It's which is very surprising, but it really they I laughed out loud more than I did that I remember

doing in an average Kids in the Hall episode. Okay, well, I was a little actually worried to watch it for fear of like, they're not, you know, going to be as great anymore, and I would be it would taint the original or something. No, definitely, and I'm never understood that how does something like a follow up taint an original? It does. It doesn't taint the original, it taints the whole For me sometimes as a as a whole memory sense. Yeah, that makes more sense for sure. But yeah, like those

originals aren't funny now, it's not like that. It's just like, oh, like a boy. Then they went on to do something not good. So, um, yeah, I wouldn't worry about that, and I don't want to talk it up too much. So you're expecting like, yeah, I don't want you to be let down, but I don't think you will be fantastic.

Can't wait? Yeah, so um yeah, So this blanket protest, I'm not sure how long it went on, but it went on for quite a while, And it happened during that period that I guess hunger covers um, which again was about the worst time you could be an ira A prisoner, because like they weren't doing this too common criminals that were in the same prison, they were doing

it to the ira A members. So they went from treating them as political listeners with a general amount of respect and all of the freedoms that that that came with, to regularly beating them and posing them down with cold water in the winter and like taking their clothes and um. Like that was the shift, the change in treatment, and they were doing it to the ira A because they were trying to send a message. The British government was like, this is what we think of you. This is how

we're going to treat you. You should probably stop right now because this is what you can expect if we catch you from now on. That that like treat that gentleman's agreement that we had before, that's gone. Yeah. So in ninety eight, and the film kind of portrays the Blanket protest is concurrent with the Dirty Protest. I'm not sure if that's the case, because the Dirty Protest came around in night this is when. And this was really

gross and hard to watch in the film. Oh I'm sure Steve McQueen covered very well, I know, and believe it or not, this makes me want to see Twelve Years of Slave more because, like I knew it was tough, but now that I've seen this, I know it's gonna be hard to sit through again. And I'm still avoiding it, but I want to see it more because i know it's going to be like super realistic. I think so hunger was your gateway drug to twelve years, I guess so.

But the dirty protest is when the prisoner said, all right, well, if we're gonna be in here and you're not gonna give us any rights, we're not gonna bathe. We're gonna smear our feces all over the wall and our food all over the wall, and we're gonna take our our urine and feces and dump it under the uh the cell door out into the hallway. So you have to deal with it. And it was a very very it's

a disgusting movie to watch, but this really happened. So one of the other things that happened to was that among those ira A prisoners who were treated like this, they formed a bond that has probably never been formed in the history of humanity, because you know, no group was ever necessarily subjected to that exactly like that, in exactly the same way. So, I mean, I'm sure there are other similar bonds among you know, enslaved and um

imprisoned populations. But because they were already fighting for a cause that they believed in, and they were suffering for a cause that they believed in, this stepped up treatment just made that bond between them even stronger. So one of the things that they they they that came out of all this was um, what's called the five demands, and it was basically, like you could summarize it as, we want to be treated like political prisoners again. Yeah,

and they were all reasonable demands. One was again to wear their own clothes. Uh. Number two was to not have to go on work detail. Uh. They said they wanted to be allowed a visit and a package in a letter, one one and one per week. And in the film they did get visitors and they were um small uggling in all kinds of things under the table, which is always a great part of any prison film. Uh. They wanted the freedom to associate again and organized and congregate.

And then they wanted, um to revoke any of the punishments that happened because of these protests that were already in place. Yeah, and like you said, they're reasonable and there's so reasonable. They almost seemed small like the iris

going through this and that's all they want. But again, remember, being treated like a political prisoner has a lot to do with optics in the general public, right, So that makes a little more sense that that it was just that is all they were asking for, um, and there was They got a big assist by a woman named Bernadette mccalis key UM, who had been a member of Parliament Parliament, not the George Clinton version, but like the

original she played keyboards so um. So she was fairly well known and she actually ran in the European Parliament on a five demands platform in ninety seventy nine, and there was an assassination attempt on her life from the Ulster Defense Force, which was one of those paramilitary groups that that began at the beginning of the troubles, but they were a Protestant paramilitary group, um. And she survived the assassination attempt and would show up to rallies and

protests on crutches. Um. But she did a really great job at focusing public support and attention on what was going on in the prisons and the protests that were being carried out and why they were being carried out. That's right. Uh. And following that the early nineteen eighties when we saw sort of the two main modern hunger strikes. Uh. That was the one in the seventies, but the two in the eighties really I think got the most media attention.

Uh one began October and this was I believe seven strikers quit eating again to try and get these five demands carried through. Lasted fifty three a's and remember that's right in the wheelhouse of where you Could die, and h one named Sean McKenna was very near death. And you know this whole time, Margaret Thatcher is you know, she's known as the Iron Lady for a reason, and she was very much a hard liner. And I think

it was a direct quote in the movie. You know, she said basically that they're these terrorists are resorting to a last resort, which is pity that we should have pity on them. But basically that's not going to happen um. But she was prepared to come to a settlement in this case because of the optics. The strike did end because they didn't want Sean McKinnon to die because that would be really bad optics. So that was the nineteen

eighty strike, proceeding the one in March of eighty one. Yeah, and the reason the March of eight one hunger strikes started is because the Brits had agreed um verbally to to giving in on the five demands and treating the IRA prisoners as political prisoners again and then re naket on it. They just didn't follow through. Uh, they never got it in writing, basically is what it amounted to.

And so they staged an even bigger, even more public hunger strike starting March one, and they, um it's I think it involved at least twenty three hunger strikers, but rather than all striking beginning at the same time like they did in October, um, they staggered it five people a week so that this hunger strike would be drawn out even longer. Yeah, and that, um, that makes sense.

I also was wondering too during the film, like or before the film, like why why can't they just squash this in the press and not let any of this out, because the hunger strike is only good if the public

knows about it. But they were still getting visitors that throughout this whole time, So there were you know, Bobby Sand's parents visited him in prison and saw like his condition and as he was like slipping away, and uh, you know, we mentioned Sands because he was very much the sort of the main public face of this eight one strike. Bobby stands. Actually Um was elected to the

British House of Commons while he was wasting away in prison. Um. He obviously wasn't allowed a campaign or anything like that, and couldn't have because he was, you know, slowly dying of starvation. But this was a very big deal that he was actually elected to the House of Commons. Yeah, it was a big deal because it focused a tremendous amount of public attention, Like every every paper in the world was writing about how a guy in prison was

elected to parliament. Um, and and now that we're talking about him, why is he in prison? And oh, he's on a hunger strike? Why is he on a hunger strike? So it was a really big pr COO for the i r A. But then also politically speaking it had like a UM it was a really big signal that the only way he could have been elected was if moderate Catholics, who normally just didn't go to the polls because they didn't want to support the ira A, but

they also weren't about to vote for a Protestant candidate. Um, they came out and they voted for the ira member. So it showed that the average person in Northern Ireland, the average Catholic was really upset with how the British were treating the IRA and their their treatment of the IRA was starting to backfire, and that it was generating public sympathy and support that hadn't been there before. Yeah, and he we should point out he was a young guy.

He was twenty six years old when he started this strike, and I think he turned seven during the strike, so he wasn't you know. I think I had heard of Bobby Sands and I always just sort of pictured him as maybe some guy in his forties for some reason. But he was a very young guy. And uh, he finally, you know, died of starvation on May five. Uh, this was sixty six days into the strike. Riot start erupting um all over the place and protest all over the world. Basically,

it was a very very public matter. And I remember hearing about this when I was a kid, even though I didn't understand what was going on. I remember hearing about Bobby Sands dying. Oh yeah, wow. It was definitely not in my wheelhouse at the time. I think I was playing with a Tonka truck. Maybe. No. I remember big news events like that, though I didn't, you know, I remember John Lennon dying and I was like, he's

the guy with a round glasses. Yeah, that kind of thing, right. Um, So when Sands died, that was a really really big deal. Thousands and thousands of people turned out for his his funeral, including very famously um Ira A paramilitary members who were wearing like um Balaklava's basically um at the funeral, um along the streets along his funeral procession. There were thousands

more people you know who turned out. So it showed just how much like people supported the IRA, or at the very least sympathized with the IRA, that they were willing to die, to starve themselves to death for their cause. And Bobby Saints knew he was gonna die. He said towards the beginning he fully expected to die. Um and he did. He put his He did what what I

would say most of us would never do. He starved himself to death for the cause that he believed in, to help the cause that he believed in, help to basically serve as an inspiration to show this cause means so much that me and some other people are willing to die, to starve ourselves to brutal brutal death to help um to help further the cost, to help generate publicity for this cause. So by the way, Fastbender dropped forty pounds for this role, so he kind of pulled

a Christian bale. It was. It was really like, uh, tough to see that, you know, I mean, he's already he's a pretty slight guy, even like under normal circumstances. You know, he laid one seventy and dropped down to one thirty. Uh. He apparently ate like nuts and berries and stuff every day, and that was about it. So Sans obviously was the main headline. But he was just one of ten men that died in prison during these

hunger strikes. I think there were twenty three total. Thirteen survived, and um Ed is keen to point out that, you know, the reason that some of these men survived is you know, eventually you're gonna lose consciousness and your family might step in, and you know you're gonna get your medical nutrition intravenously. In that case. That wasn't the case obviously with the

ten who did who did die in prison. But I think in a lot of the cases of the thirteen that survived was because they weren't able to make their own choice and their family intervened, right, So this strike, get this, this hunger strike, the second one went on from March first to October three and claimed the lives of ten men in people died during that brief period

of time from hunger from starving themselves. And it finally ended, at least in part because one of the villains in this story, Humphrey Atkins, who was at the time the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and was very much aligned with the UM the no pity viewpoint of Margaret Thatcher. He was replaced. He was replaced by somebody who wasn't

quite as much a hardliner, guy named James Prior. And Prior is like, I want to put an end to this, so let's start negotiating, and they ended the strike on October three, again with ten people dead in that six month period from starvation. Yeah, and it kind of you know, depends on which side you're on and whether or not you believe it was an effective thing, because they ended up.

UM it's sort of been uh an a roundabout way getting a lot of the five demands met, but it was never like an official declaration that you are political prisoner and we're going to meet your five demands. It just sort of it wasn't so you know, if you look at it from the Thatcher side, they never gave in. If you look at it from the ira A side, they ended up in a roundabout way getting the same status. But I think there were probably a lot of i RA too that saw it as a defeat because they,

you know, weren't officially recognized as such. Right and we should say going on outside the prison gates in in Northern Ireland throughout this time, our car bombings, assassinations, protests, riots, um, there are a lot of riots around Northern Ireland. And when Bobby Sands died, um. And so it's not like this is the only thing that ira A was doing.

We we just focused on this. But one of the things that came out of these hunger strikes, um was this idea, especially among the shinfan Um leadership, that they they were never going to liberate Northern Ireland just through the paramilitary, that they was going to require politics and and um. This this showed, especially the election of Bobby Sands to Parliament while he was in prison, that the i RA was viable politically speaking. Yeah, it's gonna be

really interesting to see what happens moving forward. But that's where they can kind of source that where they are today is pretty much there from those hunger strikes in Yeah. And I would love to hear from our listeners, uh in Northern Ireland and in the Irish Republic, like what they what their thoughts are of you know, because I trust stuff you should know listeners generally as being uh you know, alive in the world and having uh studied,

learned opinions, learned opinions. So I would love to hear from both sides to see what they think. Um, I want to know what the tenor is over there? Yeah? Same here the word on the street, the word on the cobblestone street. Uh, you got anything else? Uh? Now, this is a good one, Chuck good pick. I'm glad we did uh. And since I said I'm glad we

did it, it's time of course for a listener. Now, by the way, did you know I'm way late on this, but you know Bono's son as a band Uh no sounds no. He has a band called Inhaler and I just heard about it and listened to it. They put out an album last summer, and it sounds exactly like you two. Oh boy, he sounds just like his dad, and it has the energy of like the early You two. It's really good. I like it. Yeah, okay, good, Yeah, I don't. I don't mean that in a in a

negative derivative way. You know, your your voice sounds like somebody related to just by genetics. Yeah, I don't think he's like, I want to sound like my dad, you know, sure, Yeah, I don't think he's using auto team like that. I'm just surprised he didn't go in like a totally different direction musically, like maybe like folk folk rock or folk progue or something. Yeah, I mean I did see that. I read some reviews to some people kind of knocked it for like going for that, you know, big stadium,

anthemic you two thing right out of the gate. But you know, stuff, It is what I say, where the sun don't shine. Let someone make the music they want to make it good for them if they're getting huge. I love it, yeah for sure. All right. So this is just one of many squirrel emails we got. Who knew that that was going to generate so much email? Oh man, it's crazy, Like We got videos of people

scritching on little squirrels that they've been feeding. Squirrels crawling up people's laps and up there sitting on their shoulder like wild squirrels. It's pretty amazing. I'll like, white albino squirrels are black squirrels. Where was it the head the ones with the big long ears. I don't know, No, I didn't see those those Toronto. Where is it Utah? I'm guessing Utah. I can't remember. I feel bad now, but yeah, they have these little sort of wizard long

ears that stick up. It's it's amazing wizard ears. Wizard here's healf ears that wizards? Okay to me? Wizards? Right, yeah, I don't think so, not according to Gary Guy. All right, all right, so here we go. Um. In the recent Squirrel episode, Chuck said, jommy kid that can get a squirrel and hit it with a stick. And here's my story. My wife and I were on a National Park road trip in the Western US and while hiking in Zion, I heard a commotion on the trail behind me. I

looked back. A couple was rushing over to the side of the trail where there was a significant drop off because their son had gone over the edge. It's terrifying to witness, but thankfully the boy had been had gotten caught on a tree and was not noticeably injured. Here's how we got there. The boys spotted a squirrel in the trail and hit it with a sticky. It came after and screeched at the boy, startling him and causing him to retreat straight over the ledge. Let this be

a teaching moment. Don't go after squirrels with sticks, or you may be in for a nasty spill. And that is from Read Stiller in Dallas, Texas, who is a Texas and A and M grad and came to Athens for the Aggies Bulldogs game a couple of years ago and had a great time in Athens and said to come out to College Station for a game and you will have a great time as well. Very nice. Thanks for the invite. We appreciate that. Who was that? That is Read Stiller? Well thanks a lot, Read, We appreciate

that big time. That is a really good story. Actually, um my evil part says if you want to get in touch with us, like Read did, you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeart Radio dot com Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H m hm