Early in his time as archbishop, Hume found himself involved in the 1981 Irish hunger strike. He visited Derry in April 1981 and stated in a letter to Edward Daly, the Bishop of Derry, that "a hunger strike to death is a form of violence to one’s self and violence leads to violence." After the death of Bobby Sands in May 1981, debate over the moral aspects of the strike in "The Tablet" and whether or not it constituted suicide took place. Following the deaths of Patsy O'Hara and Raymond McCreesh later that month, Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich asked the British government to acquiesce to the hunger strikers' basic demands, seeking to focus more on the question of injustice leading to such an event, while the English Catholic Church preferred to focus on the question of suicide more heavily.