The Troubles republican prisoners led to more than 500 of them in the Maze prison initiating the "blanket" and "dirty" protests. Their protests culminated in hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981, aimed at the restoration of political status, as well as other concessions. In the 1981 Irish hunger strike, ten republican prisoners (seven from the Provisional IRA and three from the INLA) died of starvation. The first hunger striker to die, Bobby Sands, was elected to Parliament on an Anti-H-Block ticket, as was his election agent Owen Carron following Sands' death. The hunger strikes resonated among many nationalists; over 100,000 people attended
Hunger strike a 62-day hunger strike in 1976 which he began as a campaign to be repatriated to Ireland. In 1980, seven Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoners in the Maze Prison launched a hunger strike as a protest against the revocation by the UK government of a prisoner-of-war-like Special Category Status for paramilitary prisoners in Northern Ireland. The strike, led by Brendan Hughes, was called off before any deaths, when the Government seemed to offer to concede their demands; however, the Government then reneged on the details of the agreement. The prisoners then called another hunger strike the following year. This