Pat McGeown (By KFS)


Pat McGeown was born in Belfast in 1956. He was first arrested without charge at age 14. Two years later, in 1973, he was interned without trial in the infamous Long Kesh Concentration Camp for 18 months. After his release he was arrested again in 1975 and spent another 9 years in Long Kesh. During this term of imprisonment, McGeown joined with Bobby Sands and others in a hunger strike for political status in 1981. Sands and nine others died on the hunger strike before it was called off after the prisoners' demands were met by the British government. The hunger strike was to have a critical effect on both the quality and length of Pat McGeown's life from that time on.

After his release from Long Kesh, Pat helped head up the Sinn Féin Publicity Department and was elected to the Belfast City Council as a Sinn Féin representative in 1989. He was appointed the Sinn Féin emissary to all Irish Republican prisoners in Ireland, England, and the United States, explaining the developing peace process and eliciting the prisoner's input to that process.

He also served on Sinn Féin's ard comhairle and played a leading role in developing that party's political strategy and in anchoring the peace process within the Republican Movement. His political analysis and ability to develop his political ideas made him an outstanding exponent of Sinn Féin policy and a respected debater both inside and outside the party.

It was the hunger strike of 1981 though, that best defined Pat McGeown's commitment and sacrifice to a re-united and free Ireland. He was on his 43rd day of the strike when it ended, and, while he did not die on that hunger strike, his health was irretrievably ruined by those 43 days without food. The fast caused him to develop heart disease and it plagued him for the rest of his life, finally culminating in his death from a heart attack at age 40, on September 29, 1996.

Pat McGeown was truly the 11th victim of British intransigence and delay during the hunger strikes of 1981.