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
Joe McDonnell (hunger striker) wing O'Rawe and McFarlane were on, Anthony McIntyre, has backed up O'Rawe's version of events in relation to the 1981 hunger strike. McDonnell is commemorated on the Irish Martyrs Memorial at Waverley Cemetery in Sydney, Australia. Joe McDonnell (hunger striker) Joseph (Joe) McDonnell (14 September 1951 – 8 July 1981) was a volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), who died in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. McDonnell was born on Slate Street in the lower Falls Road of Belfast as one of 10 children. He attended a nearby Roman Catholic school. He married Goretti in 1970, and moved