Word: striker
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...mournful drama had taken on all the predictable ritual of a Passion Play. First came the terse announcement that Raymond McCreesh, 24, an inmate of the Maze Prison, had become the third Irish Republican Army hunger striker this month to take "his own life by refusing food and medical intervention," as the British government officially put it. Then came the rioting through Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast and Londonderry as women banged dustbin lids in the early morning darkness and gangs of youthful I.R.A. sympathizers attacked army and police patrols with stones and fire bombs. At week...
True enough. But death had come at last to convicted I.R.A. Terrorist and Hunger Striker Robert (Bobby) Gerard Sands, 27, by virtue of his own will. His earthly remains were little more than a husk after a 66-day fast in the H-block section of Northern Ireland's Maze Prison. He was the first I.R.A. member to starve himself to death since 1976, the 13th Irish Nationalist to do so in this century. Sands had failed in his mam aim: to force the British government to grant special political status to himself and 700 other I.R.A. members imprisoned...
...other Maze prisoners. Three I.R.A. members joined Sands in the three weeks after he had begun to fast on March 1, and one, Francis Hughes, 25, was reported to be sinking quickly. After Sands' death, other I.R.A. prisoners announced that they would take the place of any hunger striker who died. But the British had no intention of giving way, even if, as a spokesman at 10 Downing Street harshly put it, "they drop like flies...
...upcoming general election as a small step toward Irish unification. Now Haughey clearly has been weakened by the reaction to Sands' death. He has prudently decided to delay the upcoming election date, originally expected for this month, until at least June 10. But the approaching crisis with Hunger Striker Hughes could upset Haughey's strategy again...
Sands, who weighed 155 pounds when he began his hunger strike and less than 85 pounds when he died yesterday, is the 13th Irish nationalist hunger striker to die in a British jail this century and the first to perish in Northern Ireland