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 the winter of 1923. By February 1923, under the 1922 Special Powers Act the British were detaining 263 men on "Argenta", which was moored in Belfast Lough. This was supplemented with internment at other land based sites such as Larne workhouse, Belfast Prison and Derry Gaol. Together, both the ship and the workhouse alone held 542 men without trial at the highest internment population level during June 1923. After the end of the Irish Civil War in October 1923, up to 8,000 IRA prisoners went on hunger strike to protest their continued detention by the Irish Free State (a total