When Seán Russell was appointed IRA Chief of Staff in 1938 he immediately appointed Seán McNeela OC England and Tony D'Arcy OC Western Command.

After a few months of intense activity preparing for a bombing campaign in England, McNeela was arrested and sentenced to nine months imprisonment. He returned to Ireland in 1939 and was appointed IRA Director of Publicity and produced a weekly paper entitled War News.

McNeela was arrested three weeks later with members of the Radio Broadcast Staff and imprisoned in Mountjoy jail. He was Officer Commanding of the prisoners from February 1940, sharing a cell with Tony D'Arcy who had been arrested at a GHQ meeting in 40 Parnell Square in Dublin. D'Arcy was serving a three month sentence for refusing to account for his movements or give his name and address when he was arrested.

A crisis developed in the prison when Nicky Doherty, of Julianstown, County Meath was sentenced to five years penal servitude. Instead of being transferred to Arbour Hill, where other republican prisoners had political status, Doherty was lodged in the criminal section of Mountjoy.

McNeela, as OC of the republican prisoners requested Doherty's transfer to Arbour Hill. The request was ignored. McNeela and his prison council decided to launch a hunger strike until the demand was accepted.

Four men joined McNeela and D'Arcy on huinger strike. They were Tomás Mac Curtáin, of Cork, the only son of the martyred Lord Mayor. Jack Plunkett of Dublin, son of Count Plunkett and brother of Joseph Mary Plunkett, Tommy Grogan of Drogheda and Michael Traynor of Belfast, later Ard-Rúnaí of Sinn Féin.

Seven days into the hunger strike Special Branch detectives came to take McNeela for trial before the Special Criminal Court. McNeela refused to go and barricades were erected in D-Wing.

In the riot that ensued the Special Branch and Dublin Metrpolitian Police were deployed in force against the prisoners.

D'Arcy was rendered unconcious by blows from a baton and McNeela was pummeled by blow after blow. The wounds received by McNeela and D'Arcy never healed.

McNeela was taken away that evening and tried and sentenced by the Special Court. He was charged with 'conspiracy to usurp a function of Government' and sentenced to two years. He was running a pirate radio station when arrested.

On the eve of St Patrick's Day all six hunger strikers were removed to St Bricin's military hospital.

On the 54th night of the hunger strike, Tony D'Arcy cried out "Seán I'm dying". Seán replied: "I'm coming Tony". The other prisoners appealed to McNeela not to get out of bed as he was very weak and they felt it would kill him but D'Arcy's cry concerned him and he staggered across the room to his comrade. Later that night D'Arcy was taken out to a private ward.

Tony D'Arcy, IRA Volunteer from Headford, County Galway died the following night.

The day following D'Arcy's removal from the ward, Seán McNeela's uncle, Mick Kilroy, the Fianna Fáil TD, came to see him. He attacked Seán for "daring to embarrass de Valera" the "heaven-sent leader" by such action and demanded that Mcneela give up his hunger strike at once. McNeela ordered him out of the room.

The next day April 19 Seán McNeela, the IRA Volunteer from Ballycroy, County Mayo, died.

An IRA order to end the hunger strike was sent to the prison on the day before by GHQ but word had not got in in time to save McNeela.

In the third week of April 1940, Irish republicans Seán McNeela and Tony D'Arcy died on hunger strike.

Sean McCaughey - Aughnocloy, Co Tyrone : Sentenced to death for having detained and assaulted Stephen Hayes, ex-Chief-of-Staff of the IRA and a self-confessed informer, his sentence was commuted to life. After serving 5 years in Portlaoise in brutal and inhuman conditions, he started his strike on 19 April 1946. After 16 days, he stopped taking water and died on the 23rd day of his strike, 11 May 1946.

At 3am on May 11, 1946 the secretary to the 26-County Cabinet, Maurice Moynihan, telephoned Seán Mac Bride to say that Seán McCaughy was dead.

Mac Bride told Seán Cronin in the course of a conversation at the United Nations in June 1982: "he (Moynihan) said the Chief (sic) had told him to phone me. It may have been moral anxiety. I never understood why."

Earlier Mac Bride had appealed to de Valera "on a personal basis" not to let the hunger and thirst striker die. "I said it would worsen matters in Ireland " the Nobel prize-winner told Cronin.

During the hunger and thirst strike a prison warder sat by McCaughey's bedside in his Portlaoise prison cell. His task was to hold a teaspoon in the prisoner's mouth on top of his tongue.

This was to prevent the tongue from sticking to the roof of his mouth due to the dehydration caused by the thirst strike. Such an eventuality would cut off breathing and cause him to choke.

Coogan says: "Seventeen days (of thirst strike) later Seán McCaughey died with his body in a condition better imagined than described.

"Patrick Mc Hogan, who saw the body after death, said McCaughey's tongue has shrunken 'to the size of a threepenny bit'." Those who remember the tiny size of that pre-decimal coin can use their imaginations as to the sufferings McCaughey endured.

Bell 's account of the strike's duration is different: ". . . McCaughey died 31 days on hunger strike and the last twelve on thirst strike for his unconditional release.

"On the heels of what seemed the totally unnecessary death of a man who had long since expiated his supposed crimes were revelations as to the exact conditions in the prison.

"The Ministry of Justice had refused to concede political treatment and Republicans had refused to compromise, preferring years in solitary, naked rather than wearing common criminals' clothes, cut off from the outside world rather than accept a prison number on correspondence.

"These were men -- like McCaughey, Liam Rice, Jim Crofton, Tomás Mac Curtain -- whom the de Valera government apparently wanted to break. Even to the disinterested this treatment seemed mean and vindictive.

"Then, in the same month that McCaughey died, the Stormont government unconditionally released David Fleming, a Kerryman, who had been on hunger strike. The contrast with Dublin hardly went unnoticed.

"For the latter part of April and into May a news item about the size of a death notice would appear each day in the newspapers saying McCaughey had now completed so many days on hunger, or on hunger and thirst strike.

A similar notice would be carried each day regarding Fleming in Crumlin Road Jail, Belfast . The ordinary person in the street could not fail to compare the Unionist regimes reaction to that of de Valera and Fianna Fáil -- and the result was inevitably unfavourable to the Dublin administration.

Outside the prisons on the streets of Dublin there was disturbance and commotion. Each night a protest meeting was held and the crowds grew as the strike advanced.

On the night of May 10, such a meeting was taking place in College Green when an Aiseírí organiser, Gearóid Ó Broin, grabbed the microphone and shouted: "The man could well be dead. March on Leinster House."

This the crowd proceeded to do with alacrity until it met a cordon of the centre city Riot Squad of the 26-County police at the Nassau Street end of Kildare Street where Leinster House is situated. The inevitable clashes took place and the crowd was eventually dispersed.

The Republican Movement gained many new adherents those days and nights, including the idealist Gearóid Ó Brion who was later to spend time in the Curragh Concentration Camp 1957-59.

A new and super-active Cumann of Sinn Féin was formed named the Seán Mc Caughey Cumann which among other undertakings published a new Republican monthly paper RESURGENCE -- the first since WWII.

McCaughey was given a hero's funeral. It marched through Dublin from James' Street fountain to the end of Drumcondra. Overnight the remains rested in Adam and Eve's Franciscan church at Merchants' Quay.