Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Advisor

Sarah Osten

Abstract

A longstanding tradition deeply enmeshed in the Irish identity, martyrdom in Ireland and Northern Ireland has served not only as an expression of sacrifice in the face of religious persecution, but a symbol of patriotic national resistance against imperial oppression. Ireland’s twentieth century, an era marked by both civil and colonial tension and violence, saw the increasing weaponization of martyrdom and its roots in Irish history by separatist organizations like the Irish Republican Army (IRA), who aimed to garner local and international support for their movement through the sympathetic figure of the Irish Catholic martyr. As the period of conflict known as the Troubles slowly boiled over into a violent sectarian war in the streets of Northern Ireland, the newfound and more radical Provisional IRA continued this tradition of propagandizing the Irish republican tradition of martyrdom for their own political gain – and nowhere was this more evident than in the republican hunger strikes of 1980-81 in the H-Blocks of Her Majesty’s Prison Maze. Firmly grounded in the Irish republican martyr tradition, the hunger strikes of 1980-81 and the subsequent deaths of the ten IRA men willing to make the ultimate sacrifice exemplified the strength of Irish martyr theology. Spurred on by both memories of the national heroes so ingrained in the Irish consciousness and their devotion to the republican cause, these martyred men cemented their places in the Irish republican roll of honor. This powerful legacy of national martyrdom not only kept the flame of Irish republicanism alive in the hearts of the Catholic populations, but formed a tool which the IRA critically wielded in order to win social and political support both at home and on an international level. Utilizing firsthand narratives of several of these young Irish republican martyrs, this thesis argues that the IRA not only weaponized this tradition of patriotic martyrdom in its propaganda campaign, but became the perpetrators and enforcers of this tradition on its own men by end of the 1981 hunger strike. Inextricable from the Irish martyr tradition, Catholicism and the Catholic Church became acutely entrenched within the Irish republican struggle in Northern Ireland, and even within the IRA’s own propaganda war. In a time of the emerging human rights campaign in Northern Ireland, the Catholic Church served as an influential force both inside and outside the walls of H-Blocks, both in mediations with the British government and in several priests’ human rights crusade for the striking republican prisoners. Through the use of archival pamphlets and documents published by these clerics, this thesis additionally examines the role of the clergy in contributing to the IRA’s propaganda campaign and situates the 1980-81 hunger strikes within the broader context of human rights in this period.

Language

en

Number of Pages

121 p.

Download

Share

COinS