‘The Men of Violence’, 1976–1981

This chapter is devoted to the prison protests in Long Kesh/Maze Prison. It evaluates Church responses to the evolving protest by republican paramilitary prisoners on their quest for ‘five demands’ for political prisoner status. The chapter will culminate with the 1980 and 1981 hunger strikes which saw the deaths of ten men in the prison, including Bobby Sands, and more than sixty deaths outside caused by heightened community tensions. At this point, the English and Irish Catholic Churches faced their greatest point of division over the issue of hunger striking as suicide; a schism often reported by the British media. Fr Denis Faul, a civil rights activist, effectively ended the 1981 hunger strike by convincing the families to medically intervene. The legacy of the strikes fractured the tenuous relationship between the Church and Irish Republicans, marking a major turning point in the conflict.