IRA Prisoner Dies After Hunger Strike

Date February 12, 1976

In an attempt to obtain special political status from the British government, Irish Republican Army member Francis Stagg undertook a fast that led to his death.

Locale West Yorkshire, England

Key Figures

• Francis Stagg (1941-1976), resident of Coventry, England, who was imprisoned in 1973 for activities with the Irish Republican Army
• Roy Jenkins (1920-2003), Labour Party politician and British home secretary
• Harold Wilson (1916-1995), Labour Party leader and prime minister of the United Kingdom, 1964-1970 and 1974-1976
• Liam Cosgrave (b. 1920), prime minister of the Irish Republic, 1973-1977

Summary of Event

During the twentieth century, few problems strained the British political and judicial systems more than the demands of Irish nationalism. Decades of agitation, followed by a civil war, finally produced the uneasy compromise of 1922 that granted most of the island virtual independence but allowed six counties in Ulster to remain part of the British system as the province of Northern Ireland. This province, dominated by Protestants, obtained its own parliament at Stormont and exercised considerable control over Northern Ireland’s internal affairs. For decades, the Protestant establishment systematically used this power to discriminate against the Roman Catholic minority in matters such as jobs, housing, and political representation.

Militants, chiefly represented by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), never reconciled themselves to the concept of a divided Ireland and periodically resorted to acts of terrorism and violence in Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, and Britain in order to achieve their dream of a united Ireland free of any British control. The situation became particularly explosive in 1968 with the birth of a Catholic Irish civil rights movement in Ulster that was patterned in many respects on the contemporary struggle for justice of African Americans in the United States. Marches and demonstrations inevitably sparked violence by both Protestant and Catholic extremists and resulted in British troops being sent to the troubled province in 1969 to try to restore order and protect the civilian population.

In response to the tumult throughout Ulster, the IRA split into two factions. The more moderate wing, known as the Official IRA, expressed willingness to work with the parliaments in Belfast, Dublin, and London to achieve a political solution. The militant wing, infused with idealistic nationalism and a leftist political agenda, repudiated compromise and pledged allegiance to the traditional program of physical force to expel the British presence. Throughout the 1970’s, this group, known as the Provisional IRA, or Provos, continued a campaign of bombings, assassinations, and other violent acts that reduced Northern Ireland to chaos and created serious problems for the British government regarding the proper treatment and status of IRA prisoners.

In an attempt to break the back of the IRA, in August, 1971, the government of Northern Ireland introduced internment without trial. By the end of the year, more than fifteen hundred suspects had been arrested. This failed to crush the IRA and succeeded only in alienating a larger proportion of the Catholic population, who saw internment as a discriminatory measure that violated basic civil rights. Perceiving themselves to be political prisoners rather than criminals, IRA inmates demanded special status, which essentially meant that they could wear civilian clothes, refuse penal labor, and have free association with other such internees. In order to obtain special status, several IRA prisoners in 1972 resorted to hunger strikes, a traditional weapon used by Irish nationalists to draw attention to their demands. With several such prisoners near death, the government of Prime Minister Edward Heath, which had recently abolished the Stormont Parliament and assumed direct control over the province, granted special status to those found guilty of politically motivated crimes.

The issue of special status did not limit itself solely to Northern Ireland. Four years later, the Labour government of Harold Wilson found itself confronting yet another hunger strike, this time by an Irish prisoner in an English jail. The thirty-four-year-old prisoner was Francis Stagg, a native of the Irish Republic who had lived in Coventry, England, since 1959, where he had been a bus driver. Coventry has a large Irish population, and Stagg became involved in local IRA activities. An English court, after his arrest in 1973, sentenced Stagg to ten years in prison for conspiring with others to attack targets in Coventry and for participating in the management of the local IRA unit. In February, 1975, he was transferred to Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire to serve the remainder of his sentence. In December, for the fourth time since his incarceration, Stagg embarked on a hunger strike, demanding that the government transfer him to a prison in Northern Ireland, where he would automatically enjoy special political status.

When confronted with such an act of defiance, authorities had three basic options: concede to the demands, resort to force-feeding, or allow the hunger striker to die. Previous British governments had shown no consistency in their response. Delours and Marion Price, two sisters imprisoned in London for car bombings in 1973, began a hunger strike during which they were force-fed for 206 days before the government agreed to their demand to be transferred to Armagh prison in Ulster. In June, 1974, however, twenty-four-year-old IRA member Michael Gaughan, jailed in England for robbing a London bank, died after a sixty-five-day fast, his demand for transfer having been rejected. The following month, Home Secretary Roy Jenkins announced an official policy for dealing with hunger strikers. In the future, they would not be force-fed and would be allowed to die unless they asked for medical intervention.

In embarking on his strike in December, 1975, Stagg was thereby challenging the government to abandon its stated policy. Two days after he began his fast, he received official warning of the consequences of his actions, including the grim reminder that his condition would be allowed to deteriorate unless he specifically asked for medical intervention. On December 19, officials transferred him to the prison hospital, where he received medical supervision and advice, but no forceful steps were taken to prevent the inevitable grievous consequences of his actions.

Throughout the following weeks, authorities made food readily available to Stagg, which he repeatedly refused. He was allowed virtually unlimited visits from family and friends. Although remaining steadfast in its refusal to transfer him to a prison in Northern Ireland, the government did indicate it would be sympathetic to a transfer to a penitentiary closer to his wife in Coventry. Stagg rejected this since it did not grant him recognition as a political prisoner.

As death grew imminent, Home Secretary Jenkins reiterated that the government would not give in to blackmail. The government hoped that the leadership of the Provisional IRA would call off the hunger strike, as the group had done in January, 1973, when it decided that Chief of Staff Seán MacStíofáin’s fifty-seven-day fast was serving no productive purpose. This time, however, no such order was forthcoming.

Six relatives, four British members of Parliament, the auxiliary bishop of Leeds, and one representative of the IRA’s political wing visited Stagg during his final days. The young prisoner remained steadfast in his determination to continue his strike. On February 7, he dictated his will, requesting an IRA funeral with full military honors in his native Ireland. He died on February 12, sixty-one days after beginning his fast. According to his wife, Bridie, his final words were “Peace with everyone.” Two days later, an official inquest ruled that Stagg’s death was a suicide resulting from cardiac atrophy associated with malnutrition.

The Provos seized on Stagg’s death as an opportunity to stage a grand military funeral honoring their latest martyr. They planned an elaborate 180-mile march from Dublin to a cemetery in county Mayo. The government of Irish prime minister Liam Cosgrave had no intention of permitting such a demonstration by an organization which was illegal in the Irish Republic as well as in the United Kingdom. The Irish government diverted the plane carrying Stagg’s body to Shannon Airport and refused to release the body until the IRA agreed to take it quietly to county Mayo for interment. Over seven thousand people attended the funeral on February 22. IRA supporters threw stones at some of the eight hundred Irish police gathered to prevent disorder. As his IRA colleagues fired an illegal volley over his grave, Francis Stagg was laid to rest a mere forty yards from the grave of fellow hunger striker Michael Gaughan.

Significance

Provisional IRA leaders had threatened violent retaliation should Stagg be allowed to die, and both British and Irish authorities braced for a wave of deadly reprisals. The British government placed full-page ads in Belfast’s leading Catholic newspaper explaining its refusal to accede to Stagg’s demands, pointing out that he had been sentenced by a British court for offenses committed in Britain and that he had no official ties with Northern Ireland.

Nevertheless, Stagg’s death escalated the level of violence and political tension in Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, and Britain. The day after his demise, London police defused a bomb at the crowded Oxford Circus underground station, and the same day bomb attacks occurred in Dublin at several department stores and a prominent hotel. The IRA later claimed credit for two explosions in the heart of London on February 22.

The deadliest violence, however, occurred in Ulster, some of it engineered by the Provisionals and some of it resulting from spontaneous rage by the Catholic citizenry. Riots erupted in Belfast and Londonderry, and by February 15 authorities estimated that arsonists and mobs had destroyed property valued at more than £5 million. More than twenty bombs wrecked homes and shops in Northern Ireland in the week following Stagg’s death, and eleven people lost their lives. By August, as a result of escalating violence by the IRA and Protestant extremists, more than two hundred had died.

Continuing its no-compromise policy, the British government implemented a previously announced plan to abolish all future special political status for prisoners, effective March 1, 1976. Following the assassination of the British ambassador to Dublin, the Irish government declared a state of emergency and passed strenuous antiterrorist measures, giving the army power to search, arrest, and detain suspects.

The deaths of three young children in Belfast in August, 1976, gave birth to a peace movement led by Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan. They organized massive demonstrations demanding an end to the violence and garnered more than 300,000 signatures on a peace petition by 1977. Hopes that this movement could end the bitter divisions proved illusory.

Five years after Francis Stagg’s death, Bobby Sands became the thirteenth Irish nationalist in the twentieth century to starve himself to death, as he vainly attempted to intimidate the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher into reinstituting special political status for IRA prisoners. Nine other young Irishmen followed him during 1981. The IRA finally called off the campaign late in the year.

Francis Stagg’s sacrifice failed to end British rule over Northern Ireland and resulted in no significant change in the way the British handled political prisoners. It did reflect a long-standing belief that hunger strikes could influence public opinion and ultimately force a change in government policies. Such actions had been practiced not only by Irish nationalists but also by individuals as diverse as the British suffragists before World War I and Mahatma Gandhi in India. The 1976 hunger strike was but another example of an attempt to use prisoners to obtain political goals. William McKee, once the main IRA leader in Belfast, had proclaimed, “This war will be won in the prisons.” Francis Stagg’s 1976 death was yet another fatality reflecting this mentality.

Bibliography

Bartlett, Jonathan, ed. Northern Ireland. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1982. Anthology includes reprints of articles, chapters from books, and speeches that relate to the Irish dilemma. Section 2 contains six essays dealing with the background and nature of various hunger strikes. Includes bibliography.

Bell, J. Bowyer. The Gun in Politics: An Analysis of Irish Political Conflict, 1916-1986. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1987. Provides worthwhile information on the IRA. Parts 3 and 4 focus on the Ulster troubles related to the issues of terrorism and violence. Includes a bibliographic essay that surveys major works dealing with the Irish issue.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The IRA, 1968-2000: Analysis of a Secret Army. Portland, Oreg.: Frank Cass, 2000. Examines the function, structure, and evolution of the IRA over a period of more than thirty years. Includes bibliography and index.

Boyce, David George. The Irish Question and British Politics, 1868-1996. 2d ed. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. Chapter 4 covers the period 1950-1986 and provides useful information on the political climate of the era and how the Northern Ireland issue affected each major party’s decision-making process. Includes bibliography and index.

Coogan, Tim Pat. On the Blanket: The Inside Story of the IRA Prisoners’ “Dirty” Protest. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Focuses primarily on the conditions of political prisoners in Northern Ireland in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, but also provides useful background on the mentality and motivations of IRA prisoners. Relates the treatment of these prisoners to basic human rights issues.

Flackes, W. D. Northern Ireland: A Political Directory, 1968-1979. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980. Sets the hunger strike in the context of its era and shows its impacts on subsequent events. Provides a useful chronology of key events and brief biographical sketches of many of the main individuals involved. Also includes a useful directory of names and organizations.

Holland, Jack. Too Long a Sacrifice: Life and Death in Northern Ireland Since 1969. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1981. Moving account of the Irish troubles during the 1970’s by a journalist who is a Belfast native. Takes an essentially unbiased approach to the conflict and expertly shows the root causes of Catholic grievances. Chapter 6, “Martyrs,” examines the IRA’s tactics and motives. Includes a useful annotated glossary of key organizations and an index.

Hull, Roger H. The Irish Triangle: Conflict in Northern Ireland. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976. This monograph, published in the year of Stagg’s death, examines the conflict from three perspectives, those of London, Dublin, and Belfast. Takes a scholarly approach to the problems and offers analysis of possible solutions. Includes bibliography.

O’Malley, Padraig. The Uncivil Wars: Ireland Today. 3d ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997. This updated version of a 1983 work by an Irish-born scholar provides a comprehensive analysis of the principal parties and ideologies involved in the Irish conflict. Presents discussion of the IRA and the issue of hunger strikes. Includes bibliography and index.