Brendan Hughes

Brendan Hughes (June 1948 – 16 February 2008), also known as "The Dark", and "Darkie" was a leading Irish republican and former Officer Commanding (OC) of the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). He was the leader of the 1980 Irish hunger strike. Background Hughes was born into an Irish Nationalist Catholic family from the Lower Falls Road area of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He joined the British Merchant Navy in the late 1960s, believing it would reduce the income burden on his father. He became involved in the republican movement after the 1969 riots, believing he would be protecting his community from loyalist mobs. He was a cousin of Charles Hughes, who was the O/C of D Company in the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade during the Falls Curfew, and who was shot and killed in March 1971 by the Official Irish Republican Army's Belfast Brigade during a feud between the Provisional and Official IRAs. IRA activity Hughes joined the Irish Republican Army in 1969, sided with the Provisional faction in the split of 1969–70, and was "on the run" in Belfast by 1970. From 1970 to 1972 Hughes was involved in a number of attacks on British soldiers and bank robberies to raise funds for the republican movement. Hughes was an excellent military strategist and was key to the IRA's early success in Belfast against the British Army, especially in and around the Falls Road area of Belfast, sometimes carrying out along with his unit as many as five operations a day against either the British Army or the RUC. Hughes described his normal day during that period as "you would have had a call house [a safe meeting place] and you might have robbed a bank in the morning, done a float [gone out in a car looking for a British soldier] in the afternoon, stuck a bomb and a booby trap out after that, and then maybe had a gun battle or two later that night."