Michael Gaughan (Irish republican)
Irish Republican (1949–1974)
Michael Gaughan (5 October 1949 – 3 June 1974) was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) hunger striker who died in 1974 in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, England. Gaughan was one of 22 Irish republicans to die while on hunger strike in the 20th century.
Background
Michael Gaughan, the eldest of six children, was born in Ballina, County Mayo in 1949. He grew up at Healy Terrace and was educated at St Muredach's College, Ballina. After finishing his schooling, he emigrated from Ireland to England in search of work.
While in London, Gaughan became a member of the Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) through Official Sinn Féin's English wing, Clann na hÉireann (CNH), and joined a London-based Active Service Unit as an IRA volunteer. After the early 1970 split between the Provisional and Official IRA, many CNH members still considered the movement united; however, Gaughan joined the Provisional IRA while in England.
Gaughan was arrested on 21 May 1971, and in December 1971, he was sentenced at the Old Bailey to seven years imprisonment for his role in an IRA fundraising mission, which involved robbing a bank in Hornsey, north London. The robbery yielded £530 (equivalent to £6,700 in 2025), and he was also charged with the possession of two revolvers.
Initially, Gaughan was imprisoned at HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs, where he spent two years before being transferred to the top-security Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Michael Gaughan (Irish republican)” is irish Republican (1949–1974). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Michael, Gaughan and Irish, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Gaughan (Irish republican)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.