Participants who survived the 1981 Hunger Strike.

Brendan McLauhlin

Patrick Quinn (Irish: Pádraic Ó Cuinn) (born 1962, Belleeks, County Armagh, Northern Ireland) was a volunteer with the 1st Battalion, South Armagh Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who took part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
Quinn was born into a Catholic republican family and was the eldest child in a family of four boys and four girls born to Paddy and Catherine Quinn in Camlough, County Armagh. At the age of nine, Quinn’s father died and, as the new head of the family, his mother relied heavily on Paddy for both emotional support and to help work their 32-acre (130,000 m2) farm in County Armagh. Quinn’s mother introduced him to Irish republicanism and told tales of when his uncle was shot by the Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence. The Quinn family were unable to maintain the farm after their father’s death and moved to Newry, County Down in 1979.
On 25 June 1976, Quinn along with his brother Séamus, Danny McGuinness and Raymond McCreesh planned to ambush an Army patrol at the Mountain House Inn on the Newry-Newtownhamilton road. They hijacked a “getaway” car from a farm in Sturgan but were observed moving into their ambush position. They prematurely opened fire on soldiers when they began moving in to investigate and the IRA member in the car drove off. The others tried to hide in a farmhouse but were surrounded. After they failed to shoot their way out, the local Catholic parish priest facilitated their surrender.
On 2 March 1977, Quinn and Raymond McCreesh were convicted and sentenced to fourteen years in prison for attempted murder, possession of a rifle and ammunition and a further five years for IRA membership. Quinn was sent to the H-Blocks of the Maze prison where he refused to wear a prison uniform, demanded political status and joined the blanket protest.
Quinn joined the hunger strike on 15 June 1981. When he was close to death after 47 days his mother asked for medical help to save his life. Paddy Quinn and his mother both described what happened in interviews for a BBC documentary on the hunger strikes in 1993. He was the first hunger striker whose family intervened.

Laurence McKeown (b. 1956 in Randalstown, County Antrim, Northern Ireland) is an Irish author, playwright, screenwriter, and former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who took part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
McKeown was born in 1956 in Randalstown, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. As a teenager, McKeown had ambitions of becoming an architect and when aged 16 he started working in the offices of a quantity surveyor.
When aged 17 he joined the IRA, and he was arrested in August 1976 and charged with causing explosions and the attempted murder of a member of the RUC. At his trial in April 1977, McKeown was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Maze Prison.
While in prison McKeown took part in the blanket protest and dirty protest, attempting to secure the return of Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners. McKeown joined the 1981 strike on 29 June, after Sands and three other prisoners had died. Following the deaths of six other prisoners, McKeown’s family authorised medical intervention to save his life on 6 September, the 70th day of his hunger strike. He described his recollection of the events in an interview: “You’re very sleepy and very, very tired and you’re sort of nodding off to sleep but something’s telling you to keep waking up. This was the thing that kept everybody going through the hunger strike in trying to live or last out as long as possible. I knew death was close but I wasn’t afraid to die – and it wasn’t any sort of courageous or glorious thing. I think death would have been a release. You can never feel that way again. It’s not like tiredness. It’s an absolute, total, mental and physical exhaustion. It’s literally like slipping into death”.
McKeown completed a bachelor’s degree in social science from the Open University while in prison before being released in 1992, and subsequently obtained a Ph.D. from Queen’s University Belfast. In the mid-1990s he co-founded the Belfast Film Festival, and has written two books about republican prisoners in the Maze Prison–Nor Meekly Serve My Time: The H-Block Struggle 1976-1981 (co-written with Brian Campbell and Felim O’Hagan) was published in 1994, and Out Of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners, Long Kesh, 1972-2000 was published in 2001. McKeown and Campbell co-wrote a film about the 1981 hunger strike called H3 which was directed by Les Blair. 
n 2006 he appeared in a two-part documentary titled Hunger Strike, which was shown on RTÉ to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike. McKeown also works as a Development Officer for Coiste na n-Iarchimí, an umbrella organisation of republican ex-prisoners groups.

Pat “Beag” McGeown (3 September 1956 – 1 October 1996) was a volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who took part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
McGeown was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and joined the IRA’s youth wing Fianna Éireann in 1970. He was first arrested aged 14, and in 1973 he was again arrested and interned in Long Kesh until 1974. In November 1975 McGeown was arrested and charged with possession of explosives, bombing the Europa Hotel and IRA membership. At his trial in 1976 he was convicted and received a five-year sentence for IRA membership and two concurrent fifteen-year sentences for the bombing and possession of explosives, and was imprisoned at Long Kesh with Special Category Status. In March 1978 he attempted to escape dressed as a prison warder along with Brendan McFarlane and Larry Marley. The escape was unsuccessful, and resulted in McGeown receiving an additional six-month sentence and the loss of his Special Category Status. McGeown was transferred into the Maze Prison’s H-Blocks where he joined the blanket protest and dirty protest. He described the conditions inside the prison during the dirty protest in a 1985 interview: “ There were times when you would vomit. There were times when you were so run down that you would lie for days and not do anything with the maggots crawling all over you. The rain would be coming in the window and you would be lying there with the maggots all over the place.”
McGeown joined the 1981 strike on 9 July, after Sands and four other prisoners had starved themselves to death. Following the deaths of five other prisoners, McGeown’s family authorised medical intervention to save his life after he lapsed into a coma on 20 August, the 42nd day of his hunger strike.
McGeown was released from prison in 1985, resuming his active role in the IRA’s campaign and also working for Sinn Féin. Despite suffering from heart disease as a result of his participation in the hunger strike, McGeown was a member of Sinn Féin’s Ard Chomhairle and active in the Prisoner of War department, and in 1989 he was elected to Belfast City Council as a local councillor. McGeown was found dead in his home on 1 October 1996, after suffering a heart attack. McGeown was buried in the Republican plot at Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery, and since his death is often referred to as the “11th hunger striker”.

Matt Devlin (30 April 1950 — 28 December 2005) was a Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer who took part in the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike and was later a leading member of Sinn Féin in County Westmeath.
Matt Devlin was born in Ardboe, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, on 30 April 1950. He was arrested in 1977, and was taken to Cookstown and Omagh Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) barracks and interrogated for four days. He was charged with the attempted murder of members of the security forces.
In October 1977 he was sentenced to seven years for the attempted murder of RUC officers.
Devlin became the 15th republican prisoner to join the Hunger Strike in HMP Maze when he replaced Martin Hurson who died after 46 days on hunger-strike on 13 July, 1981. He had been involved in the prison protests right through from the blanket protest until the hunger strikes ended when families began to take their sons off the protest.
In 2004, despite serious illness he stood in local elections in the Republic of Ireland and although failing to get elected is credited for building up the Sinn Féin party in County Westmeath. He died on 28 December 2005 at the age of 55, in County Westmeath, Republic of Ireland.

Pat Sheehan (born 1958) is a Sinn Féin politician in Northern Ireland, and former IRA hunger striker at Maze Prison.

On 7 December 2010, he succeeded Gerry Adams as MLA for Belfast West, Adams having resigned in order to contest the Irish general election, 2011. Sheehan retain the seat for Sinn Féin at the 2011 Assembly election.

Sheehan has provoked anger and controversy by describing the Troubles as “probably quite civilised” and saying the IRA “could have left a 1,000lb car bomb on the Shankill” if it wanted to kill Protestants.
Pat Sheehan is the widower of Sinn Féin activist Siobhan O’Hanlon, died from cancer in 2006. He has a son.

Jackie “Teapot” McMullan (born c. 1955 in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who took part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
McMullan was born in Belfast in the mid-1950s, the third eldest of a family of seven children. He studied at a boarding school in Athlone in the Republic of Ireland before returning to Belfast in 1971. Following the introduction of internment in August 1971, McMullan’s home was raided several times and, in September 1971, his older brother Michael was interned. Later that year McMullan joined the IRA’s youth wing Fianna Éireann.
He was arrested in 1976 in possession of a revolver following a gun attack on a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base, and remanded to Crumlin Road Jail charged with attempting to murder RUC officers. At his trial in September 1976 he was convicted after forty minutes having refused to recognise the Diplock court; he received a life sentence and was sent to HM Prison Maze.
McMullan was the second person convicted after the withdrawal of Special Category Status for paramilitary prisoners, and he joined the blanket protest started by Kieran Nugent and refused to wear prison uniform. As McMullan refused to wear a prison uniform he was not entitled to a monthly visit, and did not see his family until December 1979. McMullan described the visit in an interview: “The screws [prison officers] standing beside you, hating you, hating your relatives. Your eyes are bulging because you’re locked in a cell 24 hours a day, you have matted hair, you’re filthy, you look like a deranged maniac. You go out and try to act normal to your family, putting on a brave face, and so are they.” At his next visit, in March 1980, McMullan was expecting to see his mother Bernadette, but was instead visited by a priest who informed him of her death. 
McMullan became the longest-serving protesting prisoner when Nugent was released in 1980, and later in the year the protest in the Maze escalated further and seven prisoners took part in a fifty-three day hunger strike. The strike ended before any prisoners had died and without political status being secured, and a second hunger strike began on 1 March 1981 led by Bobby Sands. McMullan joined the strike on 17 August, after Sands and eight other prisoners had starved themselves to death. Following the death of Michael Devine and the intervention of the families of several prisoners the hunger strike was called off on 3 October, the 48th day of McMullan’s hunger strike.
McMullan was released in 1992. Since that time he has worked for the IRA’s political wing Sinn Féin and helped set up groups for former prisoners.

Bernard Fox (born c. 1951 in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a former member of the Army Council of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who took part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
Fox, an apprentice coach builder from the Falls Road in Belfast joined the IRA in 1969 aged eighteen. He explained his motivation for joining the IRA in a 1998 interview with the Irish News, stating: “I was almost shot in a gun attack at Norfolk Street. I came away wanting a gun. It was survival. You wanted to protect your own people … my family and myself. When the barricades went up I wanted a gun so I approached this fella who was in the IRA and asked for gun and he said: could I shoot a British soldier? At that time I hadn’t the idea that it was the British government’s fault.”
In 1981, Fox, serving a twelve year sentence in the Maze Prison for possession of explosives and bombing a hotel, joined the hunger strike on 24 August, replacing Paddy Quinn who was taken off the strike by his family. Fox ended his strike after 32 days without food on 24 September after doctors warned him he would be dead within days due to an obstructed kidney.
As a result of his IRA activities, Fox was imprisoned on four occasions and spent over twenty years in prison, before being released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement resulting from the Northern Ireland peace process. At Easter 2001, Fox was a speaker at the commemoration to mark the 85th anniversary of the Easter Rising in Dublin, saying “after spending nearly 22 years in jail, one of the questions I’m most frequently asked is ‘was it worth it’? I can’t answer that question. History will answer that. The question is phrased in the past tense. It’s not over. The struggle continues and will continue until the British are out of Ireland”.