‘They were prepared to die for Ireland’

Announced on Tuesday, 100 years after the hunger strike began in Cork prison on 11 August 1920, a new book was written in collaboration by Claire Cronin and Conor Kenny, who are both grandchildren of hunger strike survivor Joseph Kenny, with funding for the publication coming from Cork City Council.

On that day in 1920, 65 Republican prisoners commenced a hunger strike, joined the following day by then Lord Mayor of Cork Terence MacSwiney following his arrest at City Hall. See page 16 for more on that.

MacSwiney, and many others, were then moved to other jails in Ireland and England, leaving just 11 of the original group in Cork Prison. Of these 11, only nine survived.

MacSwiney, who continued the strike in Braxton prison in the UK, died of starvation after 73 days without food on 25 October 1920.

Michael Fitzgerald died in Cork Prison on 17 October, and Joseph Murphy followed shortly after on 25 October.

“The whole idea is that we wanted the nine survivors remembered. That's how it started. These nine men fell between the cracks after surviving a record hunger strike of 94 days,” Ms Cronin told the Cork Independent.

She added: “They fell between the cracks, not necessarily because of the three men that died, but more due to the fact that the world had shifted and the civil war came along. Nobody thought any more about these nine whose lives were physically, not to mention emotionally, torn apart.”

Claire’s grandfather, who died aged 76, was one of only two survivors to reach old age, with the rest succumbing to various ailments in their fifties and forties.

The strike, which garnered attention from all over the world, finally ended on 12 November following an intervention by the then president Arthur Griffith.

“Another few days and they’d all have been gone. They were prepared to die for Ireland and for their beliefs," said the book’s author Conor Kenny.

Mr Kenny, who has spent two years researching and writing the book, quoted a brief poem written in 1920 about the men.

The poem reads: “What are these men, heroes? Well, no. Giants? Not so. What are they then? Just plain men of the Irish race. These, just these, brought to their knees the so-called gods of power and place.”

The book, which is yet to be given a name, is expected to be released some time in September.