Hunger strike dealt profound blow to crown

Gabriel Doherty on the great sacrifice of the hunger strikers of 1920

For 'READY FOR TARK' Keeping a vigil outside the County Jail (off Western Road) during the Cork hunger strike in 1920 old black and white IRA republicans war of independence Sup

‘The prisoners in Cork Gaol started a hunger-strike at dinner-time today, demanding immediate release. Between 58 and 60 prisoners are on hunger strike.’ This insert in the ‘Late News’ column of the Evening Echo of Wednesday 11 August was the first confirmation to the outside world that a hunger strike had commenced in Cork men’s gaol on the Western Road in the city. The strike would ultimately last 94 days, result in the death by starvation of two of the prisoners involved – Michael Fitzgerald and Joseph Murphy - and permanent damage to the health of nine other men who, along with Fitzgerald and Murphy, constituted the eleven who were at the core of the action. It was, by any standards, a remarkable event, one of the longest such strikes in prison history anywhere in the world, a traumatic episode in the long history of Cork city, and a focal point for republican pride and anger during the War of Independence.

And yet it remains an under-studied, and for many an unknown, episode, notwithstanding the determined efforts made to mark the centenary of the strike. While several reasons can be put forward for this state of affairs, the most important was certainly the simultaneous hunger strike in Brixton prison, London, by the-then Lord Mayor of the city Terence MacSwiney, whose fast over 74 days undoubtedly generated global headlines, and to a certain extent over-shadowed, though it never eclipsed, the longer, larger action in his native city.