A documentary follows the ripples of the 1981 hunger strike to the California prison system

Bobby Sands died on hunger strike in the Maze Prison in Co. Down on 5 May 1981.

In the following months, nine more republican hunger strikers would lose their lives in a final act of protest against the British government.

The 10 men were fighting to be recognised as prisoners of war rather than criminals.

Thirty years later, their story reached prisoners of the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison, in California.

Many of them had been dumped in that solitary confinement facility for decades, on the decision of the prison not the sentencing judge, because they were suspected – sometimes based on dubious criteria – of being gang members.

What happened next is the subject of The Strike, a documentary film due to be screened in Dublin, Belfast and Cork this month.

Like the Irish republicans in the Maze decades earlier, the inmates of Pelican Bay SHU would use the only tool at their disposal, hunger strike, to draw attention to the injustice.

Pat Sheehan, one of the 1981 Irish hunger strikers, said on Thursday by phone that “to think that they began their protest after learning about the protest here in 1981 is, you know, something that I would be particularly proud of”. 

At one point in 2013, there were 30,000 people on a co-ordinated hunger strike across the Californian prison system, protesting against the practice of endless solitary confinement.

“In 2013, to me, at that time, I was witnessing such a powerful movement,” says co-director and producer Lucas Guilkey. “I knew it had to be a documentary.”

It was a labour of love for over a decade for Guilkey and his co-director and co-producer JoeBill Muñoz, Guilkey said on Wednesday by phone from California.

The film includes interviews with prisoners themselves, who endured years and decades in solitary confinement – a practice called torture by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Méndez.

It also includes interviews by people who organised on the outside on behalf of their loved ones, and people working in the prison system at the time.

The broader story is about the damage done by the state of California, said Muñoz by phone from New York on Wednesday.

“These crimes are committed by the state systematically over a long period of time, and that, you know, took legal action to sort of name it a crime and reverse it,” he says.

Closer to home, the film may also focus minds on the impact of solitary confinement, more commonly referred to here as “restricted regime”, in the Irish prison system, says Keith Adams, penal policy advocate with the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice.

People often fall into a trap of looking over to the United States and thinking it’s all over there, said Adams, a member of the Irish Penal Abolition Network (IPAN), which has organised the screenings.

“Thinking the things that happen in American prisons are so extreme over there, they couldn't happen here, but actually it does,” said Adams. “It happens in pockets, maybe unknown to us as well.”

The screenings are scheduled for 17 June in Dublin, 18 June in Belfast, and 20 June in Cork.

Closer to home

Solitary confinement means that people are locked up in a small cell for between 22 and 24 hours a day, with no meaningful human contact.

The United Nations “Nelson Mandela Rules” for prisons say that nobody should be in solitary confinement for more than 15 days.

But in California, the days were stretched into decades. 

Those incarcerated didn’t have to openly commit any act to be given “gang validation” by the prison and sent to the SHU indefinitely. 

The criteria may have been associating with the wrong person, or possessing literature on the Black Panthers in the case of Black people, or Aztec artwork in the case of Latino people.

In Ireland, people are put on “restricted regime” to – officially – maintain order in the prison, to protect vulnerable people, for medical reasons, or for disciplinary reasons, according to the most recent “Progress in the Penal System” report from the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT). 

Saoirse Brady, executive director of the IPRT, said on Wednesday that it’s concerning that the Irish Prison Service (IPS) does not release sufficient data on the use of restricted regimes here.

The Council of Europe anti-torture committee published its most recent report on Irish prisons in July 2025 and among its “serious concerns” were people being held in cells by themselves for long periods, and the lack of adequate record keeping on the practice.  

Indeed, “due to the lack of data published by the IPS, it is impossible to determine the number of people subjected to solitary confinement in Irish prisons, or the length of time they may have spent in solitary confinement,” the IPRT’s “Progress in the Penal System” report.

To raise the awareness of how toxic and damaging solitary confinement can be on the individual isn’t the only reason IPAN want to bring The Strike to audiences in Ireland, says Adams.

There is a powerful resonance with Irish history as well, he says, in that the Pelican Bay movement was heavily inspired by the Irish hunger strikes of the 1980s.

“That was a very key moment in the Northern Irish conflict as well, where it really changed public sentiments against the UK government,” he says. “I think anyone with an interest in Irish history should be particularly interested in this too.”

Organising, nonetheless

The Strike doesn’t shy away from the fact that these men were sent to prison for committing crimes, as seen in the story of Jack Morris.

Morris was incarcerated after he stabbed a young man to death in a street fight at the age of 18. Morris continues to grapple with it every day, he says in the film.

However, he was sentenced to prison, not to the 30 years he endured in solitary confinement.

“We're focusing on the use of indefinite solitary confinement, which had nothing to do with people's commitment crimes for why they were in prison,” says Guilkey.

As The Strike documents, prisoners in the Pelican Bay SHU found ways of organising themselves in an environment where contact with each other was forbidden.

They shouted into the toilets of their cells, the pipe system carrying their voices and words to their neighbours.

The prisoners overcame historic racial divides to work together for a common aim, says Guilkey, the filmmaker.

A non-hostility pact was signed by rival gangs, who, in the eyes of the prison service, would always be at odds.

The pact helped get representatives of the hunger strikers, prisoners themselves from different backgrounds, before prison officials to negotiate for better treatment of prisoners and an end to the regime of indeterminate solitary confinement.

Sheehan, the 1981 Irish hunger striker, said on Thursday that he congratulates those who undertook their own strike and achieved their own political aims against the Californian prison regime.

That they were able to organise and collectively and collaboratively work together to take on the establishment while enduring such brutal isolation is an incredible feat, he says.

“It’s one of the things that sort of set Republicans aside here in Ireland, that there were hundreds of us together, the British couldn't send us to all different prisons throughout Britain and Ireland, so we were gathered together, so we had that sort of collective strength,” he says.

“When I hear of others, involved in prison protests, and maybe don't have that collective strength together, maybe only in small numbers, it's all the more remarkable,” he says, “and they would have my deepest respect for being able to do that.”

Sheehan points to the writing of Bobby Sands while on hunger strike.

As his own fate drew near, Sands wrote of his admiration for republican hunger strikers who had gone before – Frank Stagg, who died in Wakefield Prison in 1976, and Michael Gaughan, who died in Parkhurst Prison in 1974.

Wrote Sands, 11 days into his 66-day protest which would eventually claim his life: 

“I have come to understand, and with each passing day I understand increasingly more and in the most sad way, that awful fate and torture endured to the very bitter end by Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan.

“Perhaps, — indeed yes! — I am more fortunate because those poor comrades were without comrades or a friendly face. They had not even the final consolation of dying in their own land.

“Irishmen alone and at the unmerciful ugly hands of a vindictive heartless enemy. Dear God, but I am so lucky in comparison.” 

Sheehan notes that even Sands was thinking of the hardship of prisoners in isolation and the remarkable strength it takes to face up to the prison establishment.

The prison regime in America can be notoriously brutal and degrading, he says.

“Documentary gold”

Previously unreleased footage of the meetings between Pelican Bay hunger strikers and prison officials is included in the documentary.

Footage that Guilkey calls “documentary gold”. “It fell off the back of a truck”.

Although, as the film shows, it was through a landmark class-action lawsuit filed by prisoners from across backgrounds and past divides, that the goal of ending indeterminate solitary confinement in California was officially achieved.

For the directors, the film is about collective struggle against oppression, says Muñoz.

“We find a lot of inspiration and unexpected hope in this story, and we hope it can inspire folks around the world about the power of people power, about the power of solidarity, the power of organizing, and what grassroots struggles can accomplish when folks come together,” he says.

Guilkey echoes his film-making partner’s sentiments.

“Bobby Sands inspired the Pelican Bay hunger strikes,” he says. “Pelican Bay hunger strikes are hopefully further inspiring, maybe folks in Ireland, maybe other folks around the world.”

These are “histories from below”, says Guilkey.

“It's so important to create a record of them, and not create a record of the top bureaucrats and prison officials, but by the people on the ground, the everyday people who experienced it,” he says.

“These social movements are so important, and they're happening amongst grassroots communities all over the world, and we need to uplift and amplify and share them, because we need to inspire each other, that you know, grassroots movements are often the answer,” he says.

IPAN will host a screening of The Strike at the Maxwell Theatre in Trinity College Dublin at 2pm on Thursday 17 June. Tickets are available here.

It will be followed by a panel discussion with film makers JoeBill Muñoz and Lucas Guilkey, and formerly incarcerated activists, including Jack Morris.

There will also be screening and panel events in Ulster University, Belfast on 18 June, and University College Cork on 20 June.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.