Jackie McMullan

Jackie "Teapot" McMullan (born 1956) is a former volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who took part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike.

Background and IRA activity McMullan was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1956, the third eldest of a family of seven children. He studied at a boarding school in Athlone in the Republic of Ireland before returning to Belfast in 1971. Later that year McMullan joined the IRA's youth wing Fianna Éireann:

In 1973, aged 17, McMullan joined the IRA's Belfast Brigade. He was arrested in 1976 in possession of a revolver following a gun attack on a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base, and remanded to Crumlin Road Jail charged with attempting to murder RUC officers. As McMullan refused to wear a prison uniform he was not entitled to a monthly visit, and did not see his family until December 1979. In support of the protesting prisoners Bernadette took part in demonstrations across the country and abroad, and was part of a group of women who chained themselves to railings outside 10 Downing Street in London. and later in the year the protest in the Maze escalated further and seven prisoners took part in a fifty-three-day hunger strike. The strike was aimed at restoring political prisoner status by securing what were known as the "Five Demands":

The right not to wear a prison uniform; The right not to do prison work; The right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits; The right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week; Full restoration of remission lost through the protest.

The strike ended before any prisoners had died and without political status being secured, and a second hunger strike began on 1 March 1981 led by Bobby Sands, the IRA's Officer Commanding (OC) in the prison. McMullan joined the strike on 17 August, after Sands and eight other prisoners had starved themselves to death. Following the death of Michael Devine and the intervention of the families of several prisoners the hunger strike was called off on 3 October, the 48th day of McMullan's hunger strike.

Life after prison McMullan was released in 1992, and initially struggled to re-adjust to life outside prison. McMullan has since worked as a political education officer for Coiste na n-Iarchimí, an umbrella organisation for Republican ex-prisoners groups, and, as of March 2007, he was working as a special advisor to Sinn Féin's Minister for Education Caitríona Ruane.