Casement MemorialPrint Page

The plaque commemorates the twentieth anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands and other hunger strikers.

The Casement Support Group, which was set up in Australia in 1983 to highlight the plight of Irish political prisoners and the injustice of British rule in Northern Ireland, organised the plaque with Craig Johnston, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union State Secretary, and other Victorian unions.

The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during The Troubles by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British governement withdrew Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to "slop out", the dispute escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to leave their cells to wash and covered the walls of their cells with excrement. In 1980, seven prisoners participated in the first hunger strike which ended after 53 days.

The second hunger strike took place in 1981 and was a showdown between the prisoners and the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. One hunger striker, Bobby Sands, was elected as a Member of Parliament during the strike, prompting media interest from around the world. The strike was called off after ten prisoners had starved themselves to death—including Sands, whose funeral was attended by an estimated 200,000 people. The strike radicalised Irish nationalist politics, and was the driving force that enabled Sinn Fèin to become a mainstream political party.

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