The Politics of Starving to Death

And the ethics of allowing it.

(Audio version here)

Hello dear subscribers. Thank you for your patience while I was temporarily busy collapsing from internal bleeding. I return to you now with a modest philosophical essay about bodily autonomy, suicide, hunger strikes, and when governments should ignore the dying. I am, as ever, committed to cheery topics and upbeat reading experiences.

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Eight remand prisoners charged with offences related to violent break-ins and criminal damage on behalf of the now-proscribed organisation, Palestine Action, have now been on hunger strike for seven weeks. It is their actions, among others, that led to the group being banned under the Terrorism Act. The government gave this justification,

Palestine Action has orchestrated a nationwide campaign of direct criminal action against businesses and institutions, including key national infrastructure and defence firms that provide services and supplies to support Ukraine, NATO, Five Eyes allies and the UK defence enterprise. Its activity has increased in frequency and severity since the start of 2024 and its methods have become more aggressive, with its members demonstrating a willingness to use violence.

This decision is being legally contested. The demands of the hunger strikers include a reversal of the ban on the organisation, the shutdown of a defence firm with links to Israel, immediate release on bail and a fair trial. There is reason to fear that the protestors are in imminent danger of death or irreversible damage. Today, Jeremy Corbyn appealed to the government to meet with the group’s lawyers and discuss their demands. He was met with an unequivocal ‘No.”

The very real risk of loss of life is serious and the hunger strikers are now reaching the point of no return. If any of these eight prisoners die, it will be a genuine human tragedy, regardless of what one thinks of their cause or their tactics. Online commentary over this issue is deeply polarised. Those sympathetic to the group say that the government will be responsible for their deaths if it does not meet with them and act to save their lives. It does not seem that they are requesting force-feeding the prisoners but negotiating with them. Most people appear to be pointing out that these eight individuals could save their own lives by eating and consequently, that if they die, they will be responsible for their own deaths.

Is the issue really this simple, though?

I’m afraid, ultimately and on principle, it is.

Regardless of what views one takes on whether the banning of Palestine Action was legitimate (or whether simply expressing support for it should be a criminal offence, which is what concerns me), it would be deeply irresponsible for the government to consider deproscribing groups deemed to be terrorist organisations in capitulation to a hunger strike. A legal appeal against this is already underway and a ruling expected in the next few weeks. This is the appropriate way to challenge such rulings. The protesters will almost certainly be dead by this time if they continue their strike, but hunger strikes cannot be used to circumvent judicial processes.

Whether or not one supports the cause of Israel in the Israel/Gaza conflict, it is not acceptable to destroy defence technology equipment, causing millions of pounds worth of damage and fracturing the spine of a police officer with a sledgehammer because one believes they supply arms to Israel - a claim the company denies.

I would hope that everybody would stand in support of a speedy and fair trial and the hunger strikers certainly have cause to complain that theirs is far from speedy. Nevertheless, the government cannot be expected to expedite the trials of radical political activists above those of everybody else facing the same problem or grant them bail denied to others who present the same risk.

Despite the unreasonable nature of these demands and the appalling precedent the government would set if it met any of them, there are liberal grounds to consider hunger strikes a protected form of protest. They can also potentially be effective. These kinds of protests along with others which involve self-harm or suicide (like self-immolation) are intended to draw attention to a cause, and dying in the service of such a cause can increase sympathy to it and shock people into taking action. On a radically liberal level which protects individual autonomy absolutely provided it does no harm to anybody else, the right to end one’s life is protected.

Suicidal ideation can be an indication of mental illness and, in such cases, a psychiatric assessment is required and, if an individual’s mental capacity to make their own decisions is deemed to be impaired by mental illness they can be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. In some cases, this can include compelled ‘nutrition by artificial means’ usually via a nasogastric tube. However, sometimes suicide can be a rational decision, even if others, who hold different principles or premises, may disagree with that decision. This most commonly manifests in cases of sacrificing one’s own life to protect others or making a decision to end one’s own life in cases of serious and terminal illnesses where only suffering remains. Suicide therefore, can be a rational act if it aligns with an individual’s values, goals, and understanding of consequence, and is not a symptom of disordered thinking.

A hunger strike is not typically a cry for help while in the depths of existential despair. It’s a political strategy with two possible outcomes. The first is that the threat of death compels enough public sympathy or pressure that those in power concede to the striker’s demands. If that happens, the striker eats, recovers, and lives. If not, they face a choice: abandon the strike and find another form of protest, or continue and die in the belief that their death will serve as a catalyst for others to become more radical and active. The logic is not suicidal despair but political sacrifice: “I do not want to die, but I am willing to die if it brings about a change I cannot otherwise achieve.” Hunger strikers are exercising bodily autonomy in the most radical possible way and doing it with a coherent, consistent political goal. This is not mental illness.

Consequently, it may well be that the best way to protect potential hunger strikers from self-destruction is to neither give into them nor enable them to use their strike as a public form of activism and glamorise it. This is the same psychological reasoning that has been applied to coverage of school shooters, although the ethics of taking the lives of others is, of course, entirely different. Many have argued that, when media outlets cover all available details of a mass murderer’s life and personality and intentions, they provide an incentive for other angry and alienated young (mostly) men to seek to emulate this behaviour. By meeting our curiosity to understand what could have made someone behave in this way, they inadvertently glamorise and glorify them in the minds of those with a similar twisted psyche. If mass-murderers instead sink into oblivion and are soon forgotten, the reasoning goes, the incentive to become a mass-murderer is much reduced.

Although hunger strikers and others who attempt to do political activism via self-harm and suicide have different goals and values and their intention is to bring attention to a cause rather than themselves (OK, maybe a bit to themselves), the same reasoning works here. Their political goals can only be achieved if their self-harming actions are given much coverage and attention, including the attention of the government. The BBC and other mainstream outlets have been criticised because their coverage of the hunger strike has been very low key, but this is surely the best way to persuade the strikers that their tactics are not working and to eat and also to avoid incentivising others to emulate these tactics and put their own lives at risk? It would be irresponsible to meet the demand for attention as it would be to meet the demands to unproscribe organisations deemed terrorist or shut down defence firms. Mainstream outlets do well to give us just enough information to keep us informed without making the hunger strike into the public spectacle the strikers wish it to be.

The responsibility that we as a society have now to these hunger strikers is, I would argue, the same as we have to anybody who wishes to end their own life for reasons which according to their own values and goals are rational. They should be assessed by psychiatrists to ensure that they have the mental capacity to make such a decision. That is, they should ensure that they fully understand that, if they do not eat, they will die and that they are willing to die in the service of promoting their political cause. They do not believe, for example, that they can survive without food for much longer than they can or that their deaths will have any direct, material effect which it will not have. If any of them are delusional about this, they should be sectioned under the Mental Health Act and further assessed for the ethics of administering nutrition without their consent.

Further, it should be established that they have freely chosen to risk or end their own lives in this way and are not doing so due to external threat or pressure beyond that which a mentally competent person can be reasonably be expected to withstand. Credible protection and support must be offered if this is found to be the case. The issue of radicalisation creates a grey area here and the services of deradicalisation professionals should be sought, but ultimately, in a liberal society, we must protect the right of mentally competent individuals to take on radical ideologies and apply them to their own lives.

When it has been established that the eight hunger strikers have mental competence to make life and death decisions for themselves, are not acting under duress and have been offered the services of professionals trained in helping people overcome radicalisation, they must then be enabled to instruct solicitors on matters pertaining to their wills and funeral requirements and preparations be made to ensure that their deaths are as comfortable as possible. This should then be reported in the news without additional fanfare.

This approach not only upholds liberal principles of individual autonomy for the hunger strikers who must have the right to make even radical and irreversible life and death decisions for themselves provided they have the mental capacity to do so and they do not harm anyone else. It also makes it as clear as possible that they will be allowed to die quietly and without public spectacle if they persist and minimises the effectiveness of their political strategy, thus providing the strongest available incentive for them to desist and save their own lives.

I cannot agree with those who insist we must save these individuals by negotiating with them on their demands. This is unethical and will only inspire more people to harm themselves. Neither can I agree with those who find the situation amusing and actively wish death on the hunger strikers because they find their cause and their tactics abhorrent. These are still young humans whose lives have value and should be saved if possible. I do, however, agree with the majority who say, “Isn’t saving their lives only something they can choose to do?” Yes, sadly, it is.