Joe Borowski (politician) Borowski Cookbook". He withheld his income tax for five years in the 1970s, to show his opposition to Canada's federal abortion policies. In 1981, Borowski went on an eighty-day hunger strike to protest the absence of a provision for the unborn in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The public effect of this demonstration was blunted somewhat when it was pointed out that he had outlived contemporary IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands, who in 1981 had starved to death in Maze Prison after a hunger strike that lasted only 66 days. Three years earlier, his lawyers had put forward a case
1981 Irish hunger strike "Blanketmen" that Adams prolonged the strike as it was of great political benefit to Sinn Féin and allowed Owen Carron to win Sands' seat. This claim is denied by several hunger strikers and Brendan McFarlane, who was OC inside the prison during the hunger strike. McFarlane claims O'Rawe's version of events is confused and fragmentary, and states "We were desperate for a solution. Any deal that went some way to meeting the five demands would have been taken. If it was confirmed in writing, we'd have grabbed it . . . There was never a deal, there was never a