Bobby Sands Facts to Read Out Loud
On a gable wall on Belfast's Falls Road, Bobby Sands is grinning down. In Ireland and around the globe his has get an iconic epitome, the young man with long hair who is forever fixed in time equally a symbol of resistance, endurance and hope.
Yet for others he deserves no accolades, no adoration. They bespeak out that he was a convicted member of the IRA who at the fourth dimension of his expiry was serving a 14-yr prison judgement for possession of a revolver after a gun and bomb set on. He chose to sacrifice his own life; the IRA's victims were not given that choice.
Next week marks the 40th anniversary of Bobby Sands'southward election as the MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone. He had been refusing food since March 1st, 1981 – the beginning of a hunger strike during which 10 men would die in protest at the withdrawal of special category status for political prisoners, and which would become both a turning indicate in the development of modern Sinn Féin and a watershed moment in the Troubles themselves.
40 years on, The Irish Times poses the question, what does Bobby Sands mean to me?
'This was a young man who loved life' – Danny Devenney, painter of the Falls Road landscape
Danny Devenney was Bobby Sands'south friend and the artist who painted the Sands mural on Belfast's Falls Road. He met Sands in jail in 1973, when his creative skills were put to work illustrating handkerchiefs for other prisoners which could be smuggled out of the jail to family and friends at habitation.
"This day this young lad bounces into the cell, he had short cropped hair ... he had the style of the tartan, the Bay City Rollers, with the skinner jeans, the big wide, short jeans. He didn't look different Kirk Douglas in Spartacus, when he has the pilus cut curt.
"He bounces in and he says, 'can you do me a wee hanky?' That'due south how nosotros hitting information technology off and we shared the same interests ... we were all kids of the '70s, all into T-King and the Beatles and soccer and Georgie Best, and so we all became mates.
"When nosotros went to the cages of Long Kesh we formed a Gaeltacht ... all those who wanted to learn Gaelic moved into ane of the huts, and those who weren't interested could share the other.
"That was the blazon of guy Bobby was; if he set his mind to something he went ahead and did it."
When he heard Sands was to get on hunger strike, "I knew, knowing Bobby, he's going to take this through to the end. He's going to die."
Says Devenney: "We should also remember the good times that Bobby gave united states ... this was a immature man who loved life, loved his music. Bobby Sands didn't want to die. Bobby Sands had a lot to alive for."
'The hunger strikers chose to die. Daddy didn't' – Valerie Hetherington, daughter of an IRA victim
Alfie Woods was an RUC officer, farmer and the begetter of six children. He and his colleague John Smyth were killed instantly when an IRA landmine exploded under their police automobile in Loughmacrory, Co Tyrone, in August 1981. Constable Woods'due south girl Valerie Hetherington was eight years onetime.
"It was his 50th birthday that day, and he was called out to investigate a so-called fire ... they went over a landmine, Daddy and John Smyth, and they were killed instantly.
"Daddy left half-dozen children backside ranging from viii to 21. Mummy died exactly a year subsequently – even the md said she died of a broken middle, she'd lost the dear of her life.
"What makes me mad is the fact that Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers, they all had the choice to live, they all chose to die. Daddy didn't, Daddy was going out to do a day'south work to provide for his family, and that selection was taken away from him.
"Daddy'south 40 years dead this August. August 2nd will be his 40th anniversary. Bobby Sands stated that the revenge will be the laughter of our children. The laughter stopped in our house. The laughter was taken away from the states, our babyhood was robbed, to abound upwards without your parents."
'He influences me to this day' – Mary Lou McDonald, leader of Sinn Féin
McDonald had just turned 12 when Sands died on hunger strike on May fifth, 1981.
"I remember the day Bobby Sands died. I can still meet my brother running out to tell me, shouting the news ... I was still a child and didn't fully sympathise the politics of what was happening, simply felt viscerally the fact that something was extraordinarily wrong in our country.
"Equally a effigy of political significance I don't recollect his influence can be overstated. On the one paw he stands forever as an enduring symbol of resistance to British imperialism, to British rule.
"Plain his election as an MP was a watershed moment ... I certainly would regard it as a turning bespeak in the republican movement, in the republican struggle, the evolution of electoral politics, and I remember you could fairly say that the election of Bobby Sands laid the groundwork for not just the development of Sinn Féin as a political and electoral force simply certainly planted the seeds for what would become the peace initiative and the peace process and everything that flowed from that.
"He admittedly influenced me and I would say, furthermore, that he influences me to this day," says McDonald, non simply considering of "his capacity to endure" but also through "the cute mode in which he described what our revenge would be, that information technology would be the laughter of our children.
"In other words, it's not virtually revenge at all, but information technology is actually about a guild which, to quote the Proclamation, cherishes all of the children equally."
'They had more courage than me' – Colonel Bob Stewart, MP and former British soldier
Colonel Bob Stewart is the Bourgeois MP for Beckenham. He is a erstwhile British army officer who was Un commander of British forces in Bosnia. In 1981 he was stationed in Derry as a captain in the Cheshire Regiment.
"What I remember of Sands and all those hunger strikers that died, my kickoff reaction is incredibly brave, incredibly courageous.
"They actually gave their lives, literally, for their cause. Considering it is incredibly difficult to starve yourself to death, it is just atrocious.
"So I have deep respect for them. I don't concord with their cause, I don't call up the cause was worth their lives, just that doesn't stop me having respect for the manner they acted.
"At the time I call up thinking, mindful of the fact that these were the people who were trying to kill my men, I remember thinking they were nuts, and information technology was really sad that they were so nuts, but fifty-fifty so I had respect for them.
"I didn't think that taking life, even if it's self-inflicted, was worth it.
But they had more than, dare I say, they had more courage than me. I wouldn't have been able to do that. I don't remember I would have had the bottle to do that."
'A friend and great comrade' – Danny Morrison, former spokesman for Bobby Sands
Danny Morrison is a old Sinn Féin's managing director of publicity who in 1981 was Bobby Sands's spokesperson during the Fermanagh/South Tyrone by-ballot. At the party's ardfheis afterwards that year he advocated the dual strategy of political as well as military action, coining the phrase often quoted every bit "with an Armalite in one hand and a ballot box in the other" .
"I'd met Bobby in 1976, afterwards he got out of prison, when he came to the Republican News office, seeking communication on setting up a customs paper in Twinbrook [in westward Belfast]. He was exuberant, enthusiastic.
"And then he disappeared into prison again from where he sent me short stories and poems under the penname Marcella [his sis], which I published.
"At that place was an aura to him – a sense of a human being of absolute conviction and commitment. He was one of the most decisive people I accept always met.
"And for such a immature person, who'd spent a third of his life in jail, he was remarkably well ahead politically of many of our generation.
"I visited Bobby for the last time (I was subsequently banned from the H-Blocks) on the morning after the 1980 hunger strike ended, in circumstances that, had they so chosen, the British government could have easily resolved the entire prison protest.
"I next saw him in his coffin, his gaunt face, the beard gone, his hair cropped, and I but broke downwards and uncontrollably wept. Wept for a friend and slap-up comrade whose presence and influence is still palpable to this day."
'Many see him as a hero, many every bit a terrorist' – Peter Sheridan, former RUC officer
In 1981, Peter Sheridan was an acting sergeant in the RUC in Derry. He went on to go an assistant main constable and was at i time the North'south near senior Catholic police officer.
At the time Sheridan'south get-go idea was of Sands "the human beingness ... what it was like for somebody in those dark hours with the cell door airtight to be on their own with their maker having fabricated that decision?
"I remember thinking at the time, are at that place any circumstances that I would exist prepared to make what in many ways was a mettlesome self-sacrifice – and that'south irrespective of whether you concord or disagree with Bobby Sands joining the IRA.
"I know many volition run into him equally a hero and I know many others will see him as a terrorist. He and I took very unlike paths – at 18 years of age he was in prison, at 18 I had joined the police force and was one of the v per cent of the Catholic community who were in the police at the time, and I suppose I reflected that perchance that was the limit of my self-sacrifice.
"At that place were something in the region of 50 other people who died during that catamenia merely who didn't make the choice, their lives were taken by others.
"I often wondered what would Bobby Sands's life have been, what would he have become, if information technology were non for the conflict?"
'His ballot changed Irish gaelic history' – Kaliyah Smith, student
Kaliyah Smith from Belfast is a pupil in international politics and policy at the University of Liverpool.
"As a young Irish gaelic republican, Bobby Sands represents much of the aspirations of immature republicans today, sharing the same motivation and passion for Irish unity. For me personally he always reinforced the importance of education, he understood that education was central to the development of people and the period of opportunities.
"Equally a immature female person republican, the opportunities I'm afforded today which were not afforded to him inspire me to carry on the piece of work that he paid the ultimate sacrifice for.
"The issues that drove Bobby Sands over 40 years agone yet resonate with me today in terms of my identity and the need for a fairer society. And his ballot while on hunger strike inverse the course of Irish history, so of course his political and historical legacy is still relevant today.
"When I think of Bobby Sands, I e'er remember – as he said himself – that our revenge volition be the laughter of our children, and I call up that I am one of those children."
'Sands would probably exist the most courageous man I've ever met' – Pat Sheehan, former IRA prisoner and hunger striker
When the hunger strike was called off in Oct 1981 Sheehan had been without food for 55 days. He is now a Sinn Féin Assembly member (MLA) representing w Belfast.
"Bobby Sands would probably exist the most courageous man that I've ever met. Given the way the first hunger strike ended [in 1980] it was felt it was inevitable that somebody was going to die on the second hunger strike, and Bobby understood that himself and all the same he decided he would exist the one that would pb it off. If anyone was going to dice it would be him.
"That is merely the measure of the man that Bobby Sands was.
"One of the things I'll e'er associate with Bobby was that past-election in Fermanagh/Due south Tyrone … one of the happiest days of my life was spent in prison in a prison cell with nothing in it but a coating, and that was the mean solar day that Bobby'southward ballot [victory] was announced.
"Information technology vindicated and validated what we had been through on the coating protest – all the beatings and the torture for 5 years – for that demand to be treated equally political prisoners.
"If you think of the rationale behind [the British government'due south policy of] criminalisation, it was to isolate and marginalise, and yet that event in Apr … Thatcher'southward war cry that the prisoners had no support, that the IRA had no support, was just completely blown away.
"What that did was it accelerated the whole electoral strategy of Sinn Féin … I believe, and I think historians in years to come will identify that period in 1981 equally the beginning of the end of the conflict."
'For your body to be the forepart line ... that was very powerful' – Steve McQueen, film-maker
Steve McQueen is an laurels-winning artist and managing director. As a kid he was struck by the images of Sands he saw on the news during the hunger strikes, and subsequently directed and co-wrote the 2008 film Hunger.
"I saw it first from a child's perspective ... as a child I kind of related to that in a way because that was the only way of resisting your parents, and everyone has that story where you refused to eat and you got sent up to bed.
"So I think it was that power that was the connection, and it stayed with me for a long, long time.
"The power to refrain, the power to utilize what you're left with, your will and your body, for your torso to be the front line, to use your body every bit a tool, that was actually interesting to me, and that was very powerful.
"What Bobby Sands ways to me is an interesting question because there are a lot of complexities to it. It's not an like shooting fish in a barrel question to answer, and making a film about information technology ... didn't make it any clearer.
"From dissimilar perspective it looks different ... the thing almost it is, we're still talking well-nigh information technology 40 years on because of the complexities of the situation – information technology's not cutting and dried."
Hunger showed him that "art can advance a conversation, considering at that time no ane knew how the movie would be accustomed, so we won Cannes and and then the picture was premiered in Belfast ... and nix happened. That's what happened.
"Fine art tin can exist a thermometer to measure the temperature and the climate at a certain time, and debate started to happen, people started talking nearly things which haven't [been] talked almost forever.
"I was just very grateful that we were able to make it and for the people we worked with. It was just a wonderful experience and it kind of defined me as an artist, really."
'Information technology was like grieving a family member' – Michelle Gildernew, Sinn Féin MP
Sinn Féin'south Michelle Gildernew is the MP for Fermanagh/S Tyrone, the constituency Sands was elected to in April 1981.
"My parents canvassed for Bobby in the by-election ... Equally a child I'd have been on the hunger strike marches.
"Information technology changed my life, and that'south non too overdramatic. It changed my perception of things, information technology inverse ... seeing this swain in Bobby Sands, but all of them, and so young, and Bobby Sands was a poet, an author, a songwriter, he was and then gifted, then talented, and and then wedded to his beliefs and had such a belief in what he was doing and why he needed to do it.
"Information technology is humbling and information technology is such a privilege to exist the MP for the people of Fermanagh/Southward Tyrone who took Bobby Sands to their hearts and who worked tirelessly to become him elected in the belief that it would salvage his life.
"I asked mummy one day, 'why are you doing all this', considering nosotros had a big family and mummy was never there, she was working on the campaign all the time, and she said, 'considering nosotros could save his life'.
"Genuinely, people in Fermanagh/South Tyrone believed that if Bobby Sands was the MP Margaret Thatcher couldn't let him die, and we know she did, and nine subsequent deaths after that.
"This young man from Twinbrook, who nosotros'd never met, we took to our hearts, and when he died it was like grieving a family member. We yet talk most Bobby Sands like he belonged to us."
'I just call back ... what was the point?' – Billy Hutchinson, former UVF leader
Billy Hutchinson is a erstwhile UVF leader and loyalist prisoner who in 1981 was serving a life sentence. He is now a Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) councillor representing the Shankill area of west Belfast.
"At the time I was concerned information technology was a political stunt, merely unfortunately for those people who ended up dying on hunger strike it was more than that. People lost their lives.
"Information technology merely seemed to me that it was very political rather than really being a rights issue inside the prison, and it seemed to me that Sinn Féin and others were really pushing this.
"You lot could come across there was a tension between those who were on hunger strike and the families and the churches, who evidently didn't desire people to dice.
"They didn't get anything more they were offered earlier they died on hunger strike [considering they did not go special category condition].
"Not having known Bobby Sands in any capacity, it just seemed to me that he was the 1 that they chose to drive this forward and create publicity around information technology. And I just think about whenever you think nigh why they died ... what was the point?"
'The deaths united Irish-American stance' – Richard Neal , U.s. politician
Autonomous Congressman Richard Neal has represented Massachusetts 1st District since 1989. Of Irish gaelic descent, with a grandmother from Co Down, he is chair of the Congressional Friends of Republic of ireland, which was founded in 1981 to support initiatives for peace and reconciliation in the Due north.
"Information technology was a seismic moment in history equally American media paid enormous attending to the hunger strikers and it galvanised stance with Irish gaelic-Americans.
"I was stunned that in that day and historic period Margaret Thatcher would take taken the difficult position that she took."
The televised funerals, and the images of their coffins non being allowed into the churches while bearing the Tricolour "only farther inflamed American opinion. It was a decisive moment in, I think, the run-up to what eventually brought well-nigh the Skillful Friday [Belfast] Agreement.
"I don't think you tin can overstate the significance of how the hunger strikers' deaths united Irish gaelic-American opinion ... information technology was game-changer.
"Nosotros're now jubilant the 40th anniversary of the Friends of Ireland, and people forget why it was built-in. The thought was to endeavor to kickoff the gun-running that was taking place in America in an effort to bring almost a peaceful reconciliation between the ii traditions.
'I suppose the word would be terrorist' – Gregory Campbell, DUP politician
Gregory Campbell won his kickoff election in 1981 when he became a councillor on what was then Londonderry City Council. He has been the MP for East Derry since 2001.
"In word clan terms I suppose the word would be terrorist. That's how he was viewed by me and many others then, and that's how he would still be viewed at present.
"One of the things that has changed is that Sinn Féin and others continually effort to rewrite the history of that time to try and nowadays him in a different lite.
"You would quite regularly see quotations from Sands on murals and in publications to attempt and represent him equally a sort of an Irish poet. I can't remember the exact quote but something about 'the laughter of our children'.
"The fact that that is used so often, rather than reeling off the serial of criminal acts that he was involved in, the possession of arms, the possession of a revolver afterward a bomb and gun attack ... that's what he should exist remembered for rather than this benign utilize of attempted verse or prose to try and make him into some sort of latter-twenty-four hours Seamus Heaney or something."
'The Cuban people remember Bobby Sands' – Hugo Ramos, Cuban ambassador to Ireland
The death of Sands was reported all over the world, and in the aftermath of his death streets were renamed and monuments erected in his memory.
Hugo Ramos, Cuban ambassador to Ireland, said: "The Cuban people remember the death of Bobby Sands and his fellow hunger strikers, twoscore years ago, with a monument in Park Victor Hugo in the center of Havana.
"Following their tragic deaths, I recall Fidel Castro Ruz paying generous tribute to the courage of Bobby Sands and his comrades. Fidel said, 'The stubbornness, intransigence, cruelty, insensitivity shown by the British regime to the international community in addressing the trouble of Irish patriots on hunger strike until death, are reminiscent of Torquemada and the barbarity of the Inquisition in the Heart Ages.
"For Cubans the struggle against colonialism past the Irish people over the centuries is a mirror epitome of our 30-year state of war against the Castilian in the 19th century and the US aggression that followed."
'The hunger strikes were a deeply damaging menstruum' – Kenny Donaldson, Innocent Victims United
Kenny Donaldson is a spokesman for Innocent Victims United, an umbrella body for 24 groups representing 12,500 "innocent victims and survivors of terrorism and other Troubles-related violence" on the island of Ireland, Great Britain and mainland Europe.
"I certainly have no glee in the expiry of Bobby Sands and the 9 other men who completed suicide whilst on hunger strike. Anyone who revels in the decease of others has debased their own humanity, and I besides acknowledge that the families of those hunger strikers volition go along to mourn their loved ones.
"Bobby Sands joined the Provisional IRA in 1972 after he moved to Twinbrook in [west] Belfast. In October 1972 he was arrested for possessing four handguns, bedevilled in April 1973 and released in 1976."
6 months later was arrested with three other IRA members post-obit the bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry. "At that place was a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Police. Leaving behind the 2 wounded, the remaining four tried to escape past automobile, merely were arrested.
"One of the revolvers used in the attack was establish in the automobile. In 1977 the four [including Sands] were sentenced to xiv years for possession of the revolver. They were not charged with explosive offences."
"People need to be articulate that the hunger strikes were a deeply damaging flow of our history, where further lives were traded and sacrificed by those who were the puppet masters for an isolationist and exclusivist ideology which has never brought Protestant, Cosmic and Dissenter together in unity of life. Sadly it has achieved this in expiry through its murderous deportment."
'A defining moment in the Northern Irish struggle ' – Peter King, former Republican Congressman
In the 1980s Rex was a supporter of the IRA and became friends with Gerry Adams, acting every bit become-between for Adams and sometime U.s. president Nib Clinton during the peace process.
"Bobby Sands's 66-twenty-four hours hunger strike and death were a defining moment in the Northern Irish gaelic struggle and the globe'southward perception of the republican movement.
"A fellow in the prime of life who wrote verse and poetry suffering the agony of starvation solely to accept the nobility of not having to wear prison clothes provided a dimension so different from the British delineation of IRA men equally uncaring, murdering terrorists.
"The international interest only grew as world leaders, including the pope, sought a resolution to the hunger strike, and his ballot to the British parliament from his Long Kesh prison cell focused only more than attention on his plight and the republican cause.
"It also undercut the British story line that the republican movement lacked popular support. The extent of that support was farther demonstrated by the tens of thousands who flocked to his funeral.
"I came to know members of the Sands family unit and was struck by their strength and dignity.
"Bobby Sands's cede and expiry inspired the republican movement and led to the connected rise of Sinn Féin as an balloter force, bringing Sinn Féin to the bargaining table and ultimately resulting in the Good Friday Agreement."
'That fella Bobby Sands was a nice fella' – Prof Peter Shirlow, manager of Irish studies at the University of Liverpool
"Bobby Sands used to come up to our house, which was a unionist house, and purchase car parts off my Dad. He used to come up in and sit in the business firm and talk. I was a young boy and he was this guy coming in with long pilus, tank top, flares, and he would be chatting away.
"Then what happened was that somebody came to the firm and said to my Dad, 'if that fella comes back to this house he'll be shot', and so that was the end of Bobby coming to the business firm.
"The day Bobby Sands died was one of the few times in my life I e'er saw my Dad cry. A tear ran down his cheek, and I said, 'what's incorrect with y'all', and he says, 'how did a decent wee lad like that ever end up in that? That fella Bobby Sands was a dainty fella, he used to exist very respectful to me and your mother, he'd manners, that fella, he was a nice lad.'
"I retrieve that on the anniversary [of his death], my father would say, 'decent fella that, why did he end upward in that?'"
The hunger strikes, says Shirlow, "was probably one of the transformation points, and I suppose for those in Sinn Féin who were looking for an out from violence, those electoral successes showed them that they could take on the SDLP and they could win, and they could mobilise opinion,
"People who were uncomfortable with IRA violence, it showed them – at present of course it declined after 1981 – merely I think it did ready the parameters of constitutional politics.
"All of a sudden they have these elections where they get Bobby Sands, Owen Carron in, it gives them a different organisational capacity, and I suppose for the peaceniks in the party information technology showed them, 'this tin work'."
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Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/what-bobby-sands-means-to-me-the-hunger-strikers-chose-to-die-daddy-didn-t-1.4525223
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