Hunger Down Under

Few in Ireland may know about it, but as Bobby Sands and the other 22 men in Long Kesh were in the middle of, and dying because of their hunger strike, there was a one-man strike going on down in Sydney.

Ned O’Connor sat on the first floor of Sydney’s Gaelic Club, refusing food for 37 days as a mark of solidarity.

They hoped to force the Aussie government into pressuring Britain to bring the strikes to an end.  There’s a commemoration on in Sydney next week, on May 12, the day Francis Hughes died in 1981, organised by Friends of Sinn Fein.  More details in the next Irish Echo.