June 7 1974
Mrs Mary Stagg, 68-year-old mother of IRA hunger striker Frank Stagg, said in Coventry yesterday that when she saw her son in Parkhurst Prison, Isle of Wight, “it was just as if I was looking at a dead man”.
Speaking of their emotional meeting – the first in 18 months – she said: “He was very very weak and terribly thin and worn.
“I told him I did not want him to die.”
Mrs Stagg, who is staying with relatives after travelling from her County Mayo home, said her son had told her he had been put in the same room and the same bed in which Michael Gaughan died earlier this week.
She said she had been told by the doctor that her son was critically ill and she would be staying on, in the hope that she could see him again.
While Frank Stagg did not die from his hunger strike in 1974, he died in February 1976 following another protest.
Dublin has Cheapest Food in EEC
Dublin, closely followed by London, remains the Common Market capital with the cheapest food, according to yesterday’s monthly food price survey by Reuter correspondents in the nine EEC states.
The Dublin housewife has to pay £3.28 for the 10 basic foods selected, while her counterpart in London would have to pay £3.40. The most expensive capital is Rome where the 10 foods would cost £4.68.
Prices in London are lower than the rest of the capitals for butter, margarine, cheese, bread and milk.
While Dublin is now one of the most expensive places for food in the Europe Union, it was the cheapest in 1974.
‘We Will Be Waging Civil War’
Ulster Vanguard leader Mr William Craig warned in Oxford last night that if no peaceful solution is found for Northern Ireland, the minority “holding the country to ransom” would have to be dealt with “by their own methods”.
At a meeting of the University Monday Club, he said: “If there is no other way to achieve a constitution for maintaining the heritage we believe in, we will be waging civil war in the full sense of the word.”