History Lessons

Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane was leader of the IRA prisoners who were serving their sentences for terrorist offences, in the Maze Prison in the early 1980's. He reveals how, when their demands to be treated as prisoners of war were resisted by the then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, they embarked on a series of protests which culminated in the Hunger Strike of 1981. He reveals how the IRA leadership were initially against such a course of action, and how, with the use of a concealed crystal set, he learned from a BBC News Bulletin in his cell, that the hunger striker and MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone, Bobby Sands, became the first of ten men to die.