Jack Murphy (Irish Politician) - Hunger Strike

Hunger Strike

Murphy's troubles were greatly multiplied once the new Fianna Fáil government's budget was revealed to be a particularly severe one, and including planning for the ending of food subsidies which was going to hit his support base of the unemployed and low paid workers particularly hard. Murphy later said: "In my time in the Dáil and even before that, I was in many of their homes. I saw hunger and misery, ill-nourished children and despairing parents. That is still continuing. I knew when the ‘famine budget’ of 1957 was brought in that their position would be worsened."

Murphy tried first to oppose the impending budget within the Dáil. In his statement of 15 May 1957 he contrasted the budget sharply with the unfilled pre-election promises of Fianna Fáil : "On behalf of my unemployed colleagues, I want to make it quite clear that we are opposed completely to this Budget, firstly, because it does nothing to relieve unemployment and there is no indication of any plans by the Government to bring about increased employment. In fact, this Budget will worsen the unemployment position by reducing the purchasing power of the people. Secondly, we are opposed to it because it inflicts a greater hardship on the suffering unemployed, old age pensioners, widows and the lower income groups. The demands of the unemployed are quite simple and realistic: that the Government should immediately take what measures it intends taking to alleviate unemployment. We do not want merely words and paper proposals; we want action based on concrete proposals."

However given the majority that Fianna Fáil enjoyed within the government, Murphy realised that even if he could force a vote on the budget he would inevitably lose and so further debate on the issue would serve little purpose but to waste time.

He next tried to put pressure on the government to scale back the proposed cuts via "people power", stating "the unemployed are a force to be reckoned with. Flesh and blood, not just something the statistician jumbles around with.", he began mobilising supporters to stage a series of high profile street demonstrations. To escalate things further, along with two other members of the UPC (Tommy Kavanagh and Jimmy Byrne) Murphy began a hunger strike in opposition to the budget. Each evening they addressed thousands of supporters who assembled at protest meetings in Dublin at the corner of Abbey Street and O'Connell Street.

The hunger strikers initially garnered much support from trade unions. Against this background a series of one day industrial strikes and actions against the government became a real possibility. However, on the fourth day of the protest, after winning the small concession from the Government with the announcement that it would reintroduce controls on the price of bread, it was decided to end the hunger strike. The ending of the hunger strike meant organised industrial strike action was no longer considered possible.