The original feeling among republicans was that they had suffered a huge defeat in the hungerstrike. One prisoner wrote: ‘Despite my relief that no one else would die, I still felt gutted because ten men had died and we had not won our demands. My morale was never as low.’ Thatcher had taken on the IRA head-on and in the end their willpower cracked while hers did not. She said at one point, ‘Faced with the failure of their discredited cause the men of violence have chosen in recent months to play what might be their last card.’
