On October 3, the Philadelphia Irish Community will commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, the culmination of a protest carried out by Irish republican prisoners after the British government withdrew their status as prisoners of war. By that point, The Troubles in Northern Ireland had taken its toll on the population and as hunger strikers began to die in 1981, it provoked even more outrage.
October 3 marks the end of the hunger strike. It had gone on for five months. In all, 10 men died in the process, beginning with Bobby Sands on May 5. Within two years after the end of the hunger strike, all five of the prisoners’ demands were implemented.
The Good Friday peace agreement in 1998 brought relative calm to Northern Ireland, but there are still plenty of people who want to keep the memory of the hunger strikers alive in America today.
One of those is Bob Dougherty, whose interest in the Irish republican struggle began when he was a young man.
