» Staff Reporter
IRIS - the republican magazine, Winter 2006
On 12 May 1981 at 5.43 pm, just seven days after the death of Bobby Sands, Hunger Striker Francis Hughes died. The South Derry man had endured 59 days on Hunger Strike. His sisters Noreen, Maria and Vera and brother Roger were by his bedside when he passed away.
Paying tribute to Hughes, the IRA said he was one of the bravest soldiers of the armed struggle against British rule.
Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams called on British Premier Margaret Thatcher to accept that her efforts to stare down the Hunger Strike had failed, and for Taoiseach Charles Haughey to end his silence which Adams said encouraged British intransigence.