DUBLIN ’81 COMMITTEE | FRANK STAGG HUNGER STRIKE COMMEMORATIVE MEETING

FRANK STAGG’S SISTER, Rose, and her two daughters were among the special guests at the very first Dublin ’81 Committee commemorative meeting of 2011 on Saturday 12th February, the exact anniversary 35 years ago of the death on hunger strike of this brave IRA Volunteer in an English prison.
The event in the Ballybough Community Centre, attended by almost 200 people and honouring all of Ireland’s hunger strikers, also made special mention of Frank’s comrade in England, IRA Volunteer Michael Gaughan, who died on hunger strike in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight on 3rd June 1974.
At the end of 1975, Frank Stagg embarked on his fourth and final hunger strike in his bid to be repatriated to Ireland. After 62 days refusing food, Frank died, far away from his Mayo home, in Wakefield Prison in Yorkshire on 12th February 1976.
The night’s events were opened by Sinn Féin Vice-President Mary Lou McDonald and Mary Mullen, who sang Christy Moore’s iconic song about the H-Blocks, Ninety Miles From Dublin Town.
Mary Doyle, a republican former POW who was on the first hunger strike in Armagh Jail in 1980, gave an eyewitness account of the struggle for political status, including how she once had political status, was released, then jailed again on politically-motivated offences but denied status and dubbed a criminal by the prison regime and the British authorities.
Gerry Kelly, now a Sinn Féin junior minister in the Assembly, was force-fed 170 times during his 206-day hunger strike in England in 1973/74. He recalled the brutality of the force-feeding that POWs in England suffered, the systematic brutality of the prison system and the poor excuse for medical treatment endured by republicans in English jails.
He also noted out that Michael Gaughan’s coffin was draped with the same Tricolour used for Terence McSwiney’s funeral 54 years earlier.
Maureeen Maguire, a leading republican prisoners’ activist in England in the 1970s and 1980s, knew Frank personally and gave an insight into the warmth and humanity of the man who was to give his life for the cause.
Dublin ’81 Committee member and former Portlaoise POW Eamon Nolan, in a voice breaking with emotion, recalled how much the Hunger Strikes impacted on IRA prisoners in the jails and activists outside the jails and the depths of respect there was for POWs in English jails, “in the belly of the beast”.
Other ex-prisoners in England, including Andy Mulryan and Vincent Donnelly, spoke from the floor with passion about the inspiration they took from the Hunger Strikers.
It is an inspiration that lives on in republicans today.

Flowers for Frank

“YOUR sacrifice will never be forgotten,” was the simple message on the flowers left by Naoise Ó Faoláin, a young Belfast republican, on the grave of Frank Stagg in the Republican Plot in Leigue Cemetery in Ballina, County Mayo, on Frank’s anniversary.
A number of Belfast republicans visited the cemetery to mark the 35th anniversary of the death on hunger strike of Volunteer Frank Stagg.
The Republican Plot holds the remains of Stagg and his comrade Michael Gaughan who also died in an English prison while on hunger strike.
Seán ‘Jack’ Neela, who died in Arbour Hill while in Free State custody, is also remembered on the republican memorial.