Laurence McKeown was an Irish republican prisoner for 16 years in Long Kesh prison, Belfast. He joined the hunger strike on June 29, 1981, entering a coma after 70 days. McKeown survived due to medical intervention authorized by his family, and the strike was called off soon after. The following is an excerpt from a recent interview in which McKeown reflects on his experience.

What sort of impact did the hunger strike have on the greater community outside the prison and the struggle in general?

The hunger strikes [were one of the] most significant things that happened to the nationalist community. It changed peoples’ views of the IRA for certain, of republican politics, the attitude toward constitutional politics, the Dublin government, the Church… It impacted on so many different levels, socially and culturally, and really transformed the situation in many ways. The IRA afterwards had a legitimacy that they didn’t completely have beforehand. Even people who didn’t necessarily agree with the IRA but could sympathize with the hunger strikers would see them as legitimate, or their cause as legitimate, regardless of their community or where they were from. That was reflected in the funerals, and the fact that Bobby Sands was elected an MP before he died, and Kieran Doherty was elected a member of the Dublin Parliament. It showed the legitimacy of the people both north and south.

How did you come to the decision to go on strike?

I don’t think a hunger strike would’ve happened in the way it did, if people weren’t already fully aware of what they were involved in. Not only was it the issue of “Okay, on a political level, we’re political prisoners and want to be recognized as such,” but on a very practical level this was about the rest of our time in jail. I did 11 more years in jail after the hunger strike, so there was a very political and a practical element to the whole thing.

I was 24 at the time, which was the average age; people who died on the hunger strike were 23, 24, 27. Most people were coming to jail when they were 19, so I think a number of the people were very young. I was 19 when I went to jail.

So on a personal level, I agreed totally with the hunger strike as a tactic because we had exhausted everything else. We had been on the protest four years, and I believe that it had to be done. I believe it was crucial for the struggle, and I think being involved in the struggle in the first place means you’ve accepted that you would end up dead or in prison, so there was already a commitment there, an element of self-sacrifice or preparedness for it.

There is no way of knowing what it’s going to be like if it comes down to that; you know, is some sort of a personal ego going to override the political collective commitment? And there’s no way of answering that, although you just try to be very truthful to yourself. And I think that rebel Republicans at that time were the most irreverent Republicans that you could get.

So there’s no way of knowing, other than knowing yourself and thinking -- if it comes to the end -- have I got the strength to continue with it? And the fear, both then, of putting your name down and volunteering was if you let people down at the end. There’s no way you’re going to know, other than that you’ve thought it all out. You could say since I had volunteered the first time -- there was a hunger strike in 1980 -- I was volunteering for the second one. And, as luck would have it, I was picked after the first stage. If I had been picked earlier I would be dead now, or it could’ve happened that I’d have never been picked.

Once you get into the hunger strike -- it didn’t impact as great as people think. People would ask, “did you feel hungry?” I suppose there was a feeling of emptiness, but it’s different from if you’re eating and you miss a meal and you end up “starving” because you want to eat but you didn’t get a chance. Once you decide you’re not going to eat, I think it changes that. Most people, or a lot of people, died on the hunger strike because their kidneys collapsed. They weren’t able to take the toxins that are in your system.

And as the hunger strike goes on, you just get weaker and weaker, and after 40 odd days, your sight starts to go. I ended up practically blind by the end of it. My eyes were twitching, which I ended up with afterwards. But I think as it actually comes to the very final stage, I think what keeps you going is hope that something is going to happen. I know for me, that once the person in front of you dies and you know you’re the next in line, at that stage you’re already very weak. You get to the point where you know there’s not going to be some miracle happening, that the British government isn’t going to suddenly make some major offer.

I think your body does keep going to the very end. Whether it’s the will to live or your mind or whatever it is that goes on. You’re in a position where you’re so weak and tired that the idea of the end maybe kicks in differently. I don’t think there’s ever a point where the thought “oh, do I want to do this?” didn’t hit me. I wanted to live -- definitely. But I wasn’t going to give up the hunger strike to live. And I think there’s a point that comes where it becomes a very lonely existence -- but that’s what it is, an existence.

In my case, I went into a coma on the 69th day, and my mother authorized medical intervention. I was moved back into H4, and the hunger strike ended. I think out of all the people remaining on hunger strike, the families had said that they would medically intervene, which was why the hunger strike was called off. As a weapon it had lost its usefulness; whereas originally there was pressure on the British government to give concessions, now the pressure was on the families.

Do you feel that the British learned any lessons from the hunger strike?

In terms of the political lessons or how to deal with prisoners, I mean the lessons that they learned have always been used for counterinsurgency in other prisons.

But I suppose we’re naïve if we think otherwise. I mean, that’s normal business. Governments -- there’s nothing you can say but that they’re at the end of it. So you know, the game is working.

Laurence McKeown is the author of Out of Time: Irish Republican Prisoners Long Kesh 1972-2000., the co-author of a feature film, H3 and two plays, The Laughter of Our Children and A Cold House.