Bobby Sands (1954 - 1981)

Tue Mar 09, 1954

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Image: A mural depicting Bobby Sands, reading “Everyone, Republican or otherwise, has their particular role to play…our revenge will be the laughter of our children” [irishtimes.com]

Bobby Sands, born on this day in 1954, was an Irish revolutionary who served in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Sands died from a hunger strike at age 27 while imprisoned, just one month after becoming the elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

Sands grew up in North Belfast, a member of the Catholic minority and in a majority Protestant area. After being threatened at gunpoint and called “Fenian scum” by his co-workers at the age of 15, Sands became dedicated to revolutionary politics. In 1972, he attended his first Provisional IRA meeting.

Just a few months later, Sands was arrested and charged in October 1972 with possession of four handguns found in the house where he was living. After being released in 1976, he continued to be active in the IRA.

Later that year, Sands and five others were arrested following the bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry and a subsequent shootout with police. Sands and three others were sentenced to 14 years in prison for possession of a revolver.

Undeterred, Sands continued to protest in prison. He refused to wear a prison uniform and was kept in his cell naked without access to bedding for 13 hours a day. While incarcerated, Sands authored poems and songs, published by Republican magazines.

On March 1st, 1981, Sands initiated a hunger strike in collaboration with other inmates. The demands of the hunger strike included the right to not have to do prison work, the right to not wear a prison uniform, and full restoration of remission lost through protest.

Sands narrowly won a special election to serve as MP of Fermanagh and South Tyrone on April 9th, 1981, more than a month into the hunger strike. In response, the British government introduced the “Representation of the People Act”, which prevents prisoners serving jail terms of more than one year in either the UK or the Republic of Ireland from being nominated as candidates in British elections.

Less than a month after winning this election, Sands died in prison at the age of 27. More than 100,000 people lined the route of Sands’ funeral, and he was buried in the New Republican Plot, alongside 76 others.

“They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn’t want to be broken.”

- Bobby Sands

  • apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world
    5·
    4 days ago

    Rest in power, Bobby Sands. True hero.

    All things must come to pass as one, so hope should never die. There is no height or bloody might that a freeman can’t defy. There is no source or foreign force can break one man who knows that his free will no thing can kill … and from that, freedom grows.

    Tiocfaidh ár lá’ (Our day will come), I said to myself, Tiocfaidh ár lá.