Hunger Strike

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This authoriative new history by historian Thomas Hennessey based on recently declassified British government documents, argues that it was amost impossible for the British government to grant the demands of the Republican prisoners, regardless of the impact the hunger strikes had in boosting support for Sinn Fein. The concession of the '5 demands' would have amounted to POW status for Republican prisones and would have fatally undermined the British position that it was fighting terrorism. Controversially, Hennessey concludes that the long-term consequence for the Republican Movement was an irreversible change of strategy, effectively sowing the seeds of the end of the armed struggle as far back as 1981. Thatcher's personal role in the hunger strikes is forensically analysed.