#OTD in 1956 – Birth of Kevin Lynch, an Irish Republican hunger striker and member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) from Park near Dungiven, Co Derry.

Fuair siad bás ar son Saoirse na hÉireann.

Kevin Lynch  was a republican hunger striker and member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) from Park near Dungiven, Co Derry. The Dungiven Hurling team was renamed Kevin Lynch’s Hurling Club in his honour after his death.

Lynch’s older brother, Frank, was an amateur boxer and he also participated in the sport as well as Gaelic football and hurling. Lynch was a member of the winning Dungiven team which won the Feile na nGael Division 3 in Thurles , Co Tipperary in 1971 and in 1972 he captained the Derry Hurling team to an Under-16 All-Ireland title at Croke Park, Dublin by defeating Co Armagh.

The eighth republican to join the hunger-strike for political status, on 23 May 1981, following the death of Patsy O’Hara, was twenty-five-year-old fellow INLA Volunteer Kevin Lynch from the small, North Derry town of Dungiven who had been imprisoned since his arrest in 1976.

Kevin Lynch died after 71 days on hunger strike on 1 August 1981.

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