History of Sinn Féin trend of power in both Sinn Féin and the IRA shifting north. In particular, Ó'Brádaigh's part in the 1975 IRA ceasefire had damaged his reputation in the eyes of Ulster republicans. The prisoners' protest climaxed with the 1981 hunger strike, during which striker Bobby Sands was elected Member of Parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone with the help of the Sinn Féin publicity machine. After his death on hunger strike, his seat was held, with an increased vote, by his election agent, Owen Carron, and two IRA volunteers were also elected to Dáil Éireann. These successes helped convince republicans that
Summer 1981 hunger demonstrations in Poland Summer 1981 hunger demonstrations in Poland In mid-1981, amid widespread economic crisis and food shortages, thousands of Poles, mainly women and their children, took part in several hunger demonstrations, organized in cities and towns across the country. The protests were peaceful, without rioting, and the biggest one took place on July 30, 1981 in Łódź. The situation in Poland was serious enough that it prompted Adam Michnik to write, "Poland faces hunger uprisings'". The summer of 1981 was a very turbulent time in Communist Poland. The creation of Solidarity, the first independent mass political movement in the Eastern Bloc, raised