“The Government takes no pleasure in the sight of young men and women inflicting suffering on themselves and their families”: British State interest in the families of non-conforming republican prisoners in Northern Ireland, 1975-1981

Though the influence of families on prison protest came to a tipping point during the latter hunger strike campaign, families were directly and indirectly linked to the prison system prior to this. Thomas Hennessey acknowledges the role of families during the hunger strike campaigns and argues the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) saw an emerging division between the hunger strikers and their relatives by July 1981, but the state’s prediction of and attempts to exacerbate this division began prior to the hunger strike campaign in a way that is not explored in existing accounts of the prison crisis.

Rumours of a hunger strike had been circulating around the prison and the community since 1979, and NIO officials discussed the possibility of a large-scale prison hunger strike even before the removal of special category status was announced in 1976. The British state similarly recognised that hunger strikes were a part of the republic tradition, with individual and collective hunger strike campaigns having occurred since the start of the Troubles, which meant it was able to build a strong public position regarding hunger strikes prior to the mass campaigns of 1980 and 1981.