Hunger strike time, instead of many prisoners striking at the same time, the hunger strikers started fasting one after the other in order to maximise publicity over the fate of each one. Bobby Sands was the first of ten republican paramilitary prisoners to die during a hunger strike in 1981. There was widespread sympathy for the hunger strikers from Irish republicans and the broader nationalist community on both sides of the Irish border. Bobby Sands was elected as an MP to the UK's Houses of Parliament and two other hunger strikers, Paddy Agnew and Kieran Doherty, were elected to Dáil Éireann in
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