Artistic Reactions To The 1981 Irish Hunger Strike
Between the 1 March 1976 and the 3 October 1981 Irish Republican prisoners in HM Prison Maze carried out a variety of protests against the withdrawal of Special Category Status for prisoners convicted of proscribed "terrorism" offences. These protests culminated in the 1981 Irish hunger strike in which ten prisoners died.
This article lists the various artistic responses to these protests, made at the time and subsequently by artists supportive or opposing the protestors, and by artists who were uninvolved in the conflict.
Read more about Artistic Reactions To The 1981 Irish Hunger Strike: Street Art, Poetry, Fiction, Theatre, Films, Songs
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“I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“But Irish had an old soul, you might say. He was a man with a great future behind him, already.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr feet
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr legs”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)