1981 Irish Hunger Strike - Commemorations

Commemorations

See also: Artistic reactions to the 1981 Irish hunger strike

There are memorials and murals in memory of the hunger strikers in towns and cities across Ireland, including Belfast, Dublin, Derry, Crossmaglen and Camlough. Annual commemorations take place across Ireland for each man who died on the hunger strike, and an annual hunger strike commemoration march is held in Belfast each year, which includes a Bobby Sands memorial lecture. Several towns and cities in France have named streets after Bobby Sands, including Paris and Le Mans. The Iranian government also named a street running alongside the British embassy in Tehran after Bobby Sands, which was formerly called Winston Churchill Street.

A memorial to the men who died in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the Easter Rising and the hunger strike stands in Waverley Cemetery, Sydney, Australia, which is also the burial place of Michael Dwyer of the Society of United Irishmen. In 1997 the people of Hartford, Connecticut, in the United States dedicated a monument to Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers. The monument stands in a traffic circle known as "Bobby Sands Circle", at the bottom of Maple Avenue near Goodwin Park. On 20 March 2001 Sinn Féin's national chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin opened the National Hunger Strike Commemoration Committee's exhibition at the Europa Hotel in Belfast, which included three original works of art from Belfast-based artists. A separate exhibition was also launched in Derry the following month. Three films have been made based on the events of the hunger strike, Some Mother's Son starring Helen Mirren, H3 (which was co-written by former hunger striker Laurence McKeown), and Steve McQueen's Hunger.