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» 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.
POLITICO
Martyrdom helped the Irish gain independence. It may not work the same way in Putin’s Russia.
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Alexei Navalny’s hunger strike in a penal colony to the east of Moscow has a particular resonance in Ireland, where the hunger strike has played a role in politics, both national and local, from the mists of the country’s pre-Christian Celtic culture up to the 1980s, when Bobby Sands, a republican prisoner and member of the British Parliament, died after a 66-day fast in a Northern Ireland prison.
Navalny and Sands have different demands, but their methods are similar. What the two have in common is their use of a tactic that has shown in the past to be exceptionally effective at bringing attention to political causes. In Ireland hunger strikes have met with success through the creation of political martyrs; it remains to be seen if the same will be true for Navalny.
What the Irish Could Teach Navalny About Hunger Strikes yahoo.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yahoo.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
What should be done with the vehicles that were used by Pope John Paul II on his visit to Ireland?
The popemobiles were two vehicles purpose built for the papal visit to Ireland in 1979. The company that built the popemobile, OBAM Vehicle Builders Ltd in Cork, has already scrapped one of the vehicles and dismantled the other. The former Bishop of Cork Dr Cornelius Lucey has now intervened as he felt that,
They should be preserved as momentos of a unique occasion.
However, it is too late to save the smaller one which is now just a pile of scrap. The larger popemobile used in Pope John Paul II s visit at the Phoenix Park and in Galway still survives.