The United Kingdom in the early twentieth century was convulsed and transformed by militant suffragettes and Irish Republicans. There is an enormous literature on each movement, but each tends to be treated (rather anachronistically) as an episode within its own ‘national’ history. To be sure, there were substantial differences between the two movements: suffragette militancy stopped short of killing, while Republicans aimed to dismember the polity rather than to join it. Despite these differences, both movements made extensive use of hunger strikes to counter imprisonment; Republicans clearly borrowed the tactic from suffragettes. This talk will compare hunger strikes by militant suffragettes from 1909 to 1914, and by Irish Republicans from 1917 to 1923--against British rule and subsequently against the Free State. The investigation is founded on a newly compiled database of every individual who went on hunger strike in this period. Michael Biggs aims to explain why hunger strikes were such a potent tactic, a tactic which enabled prisoners to force concessions from those occupying positions of power, from prison warders to Prime Ministers.