HUNGER STRIKER

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 May 1946, Page 8

HUNGER STRIKER

INQUIRY INTO IRISHMAN’S DEATH REFUSED DUBLIN, May 30. After a heated debate in the Dail, a motion for an inquiry into the prison treatment of Sean McCaughey, who died after a hunger strike of 23 days in the Maryborough Prison, was defeated by 66 votes to 14. “If the gang of which McCaughey was a member had had its way Eire would have been involved in the war,” said Mr. Gerald Boland. “The present campaign is aimed at getting dangerous men from 'gaol. “I am not going to say we have this conspiracy beaten, but while this Government is in power the Irish Republican Army is not going to got away with, it. The de Valera Government has paid the price in the past for its leniency to the I.R.A. Now it has to be firm.”

Relatives of McCaughey walked out of the inquest when the coroner refused to hear evidence of his treatment before his strike, McCaughey, who was. 32, was serving a .life sentence. for his part in the illegal imprisonment of the I.R.A. chief of staff, who was sentenced to death by his former colleagues, but who escaped from them and, still manacled and blindfolded, appeared in a Dublin street and asked passersby to help him to the police. From the day his sentence began, McCaughey refused prison clothes, and he was forbidden the use of his own. Fie wore prison blankets.