As with internment in 1971 and Bloody Sunday in 1972 , IRA recruitment was boosted , resulting in a new surge of paramilitary activity . There was an upsurge of violence after the comparatively quiet years of the late 1970s , with widespread civil disorder in Northern Ireland and rioting outside the British Embassy in Dublin . Security forces fired 29,695 plastic bullets in 1981 , causing seven deaths , compared to a total of around 16,000 bullets and four deaths in the eight years following the hunger strikes
Bloody Sunday
Bloody Sunday (1972)
1981 Irish hunger strike