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
The Troubles in Ballymena Ballymena on 24 May 1974. The pub had stayed open during the Ulster Workers' Council strike. The gunmen arrived at the pub in a convoy with a busload of other loyalists. All 30 men were detained at a police road block. Two were later sentenced to life imprisonment. Yvonne Dunlop, aged 27, a Protestant, was killed as the result of a Provisional IRA firebomb in the shop where she worked on Bridge Street on 9 October 1976. Among those jailed for the attack was IRA member Thomas McElwee, who died in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. Later that same day,