Amongst the points I have stressed in my previous posts about pacifism, Blessed are the peacemakers, and Christian pacifists; is the inescapable conclusion, that if adopted as a way of being in the world, pacifism requires extreme self-sacrifice. The metaphor of walking toward the cross is entirely applicable here. And none more so than the women and men who throughout the ages have protested injustice by engaging in hunger strikes.
Clearly this is at the more extreme end of non-violent dissent and obviously not all pacifists engage in hunger strikes. It is also evident from history that not all hunger strikers are pacifists. The scores of Irish Republican Army members, for example, who famously died on hunger strike in the various struggles for Ireland’s independence, were not committed to non-violence. Yet as Allen Feldman makes clear,
“It was precisely the pacifist or and religious iconography surrounding Irish hunger strikes that gained it wide popular support and sympathy throughout Ireland and the international community.” 1
This has a particular personal relevance to me because among these martyred hunger strikers, is one of my uncles Frank Stagg, who died of starvation in an English jail in 1976.
It is also noteworthy, that this most courageous mode of dissent has a long history in Ireland that predates Christianity.2 Moreover, it is likely, that it was from pacifists and suffragists engaging in this long established protest tradition, early last century; that the IRA hunger strikers took their lead.
Historically, neither is the long history of hunger striking unique to Ireland. India has a similar very ancient trajectory, drawn upon with dramatic effect by Mahatma Gandhi in his various hunger strikes. Similarly, Russian dissidents have a time-honored custom of starving for justice. Actually, in the modern period, it was from Russian women’s non-violent hunger protests, that this sacrificial act that most frustrates the ‘militaristic state,’ was in a sense re-birthed in the West.3
Today not all hunger strikes grab the headlines in the way that they perhaps once did. But make no mistakes this ancient and arduous sacrificial way of speaking truth to power is still being undertaken by the courageous few in every dark, unjust, corner of the world.
Few people have captured the motivation and profound effect of starving for justice more succinctly than Sharman Apt Russell, who movingly writes that,
“Hunger strikers believe that the voice of hunger has a power disproportionate to its source. Hunger can strengthen the weak; inspire the timid, bully the powerful. The voice of hunger can free the oppressed and right injustice, it can alter history.” 4
Clearly starving oneself for justice and peace denotes that these folks do not go quietly into the night. Rather, they are beacons of immense other-centered love, shining a light on darkness. In many cases they are unsung heroes who pay the ultimate price in their descent against ongoing wanton cruelty and injustice in this world.
Pacifists have without question, always been amongst these noble folk, and it was ever thus. But let me close, with the words of my dying uncle, who said it all in terms of what motivates such extraordinary courage; “We are the risen people, this time we must not be driven into the gutter. Even if this should mean dying for justice. The fight must go on. I want my memorial to be peace with justice.”5 Now maybe, just maybe, that might be worth hungering for!
- Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence: The Narrative of the Body and Political Terror in Northern Ireland (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1991), 220. [↩]
- Tom Deignan, “Hunger Strikes and the Desperate Desire for Justice.” America Magazine: Jesuit Review. February 23, 2018. https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/02/23/hunger-strikes-and-desperate-desire-justice [↩]
- Kevin. Grant, Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 1890–1948 (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2019). [↩]
- Sharman Apt. Russell, Hunger: An Unnatural History (New York: Basic Books.2005), 73. [↩]
- https://stairnaheireann.net/2016/02/12/1976-frank-stagg-irish-political-prisoner-dies-on-hunger-strike-in-english-prison-2/ [↩]