Kieran Nugent The First Blanket Man

In September 1976, nineteen-year-old Kieran Nugent from the Falls Road was the first republican to be sentenced under the new British prison regime aimed at criminalising the struggle for Irish independence. He faced a daunting task—how to react in the face of violent warders under orders to break him. They stripped him and beat him and tried to force him to wear a criminal uniform, accept a number in place of his name, and address them as ‘Sir’. Nugent defiantly refused. Alone, he began the protest that went on to captivate the world in the 1981 hunger strike. Kieran Nugent began the blanket protest.