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
Hunger strike in the death of Thomas Ashe in Mountjoy Prison. During the Anglo-Irish war, in October 1920, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, died on hunger strike in Brixton prison. Two other Cork IRA men, Joe Murphy and Michael Fitzgerald, died in this protest. Over a period of 94 days, from August 11 to November 12, 1920 John and Peter Crowley, Thomas Donovan, Michael Burke, Michael O'Reilly, Christopher Upton, John Power, Joseph Kenny and Seán Hennessy, demanding reinstatement of political status and release from prison, undertook a hunger strike at the Cork County Gaol. Arthur Griffith called off the strikes