The hunger strike is still a very emotive subject in Ireland. For many, even though it is 35 years ago, it is like it happened yesterday. The pain is still there. I meet relatives of those who died and I sense their pain. I met with Bik McFarlane, the leader of the prisoners during the hunger strike, several times recently and I still sense his hurt and sadness. I also sense his pride and determination and an amazing lack of bitterness.
I also notice the hostility within sections of the unionist community, some of whom speak in disparaging terms about those who died on hunger strike. They do not appear to want to understand the historical and political background. One writer who has made an effort to do so is Fermanagh man Denzil McDaniel who writes in the Impartial Reporter. He urged people including unionists to go to see the recently released film ’66 Days’ about Bobby Sands.
As I see it the hunger strike was about solidarity – solidarity among the prisoners and solidarity of the prisoners with those who have struggled and were struggling for Irish freedom. It was also about solidarity with the families of the prisoners. Many who are now involved in the political struggle for justice and freedom in Ireland look up to these men and regard them as heroes. Oppressed people and groups in other countries also look to the hunger-strikers for inspiration. They did what they did for the greater good and for generations to come. They wanted to progress the struggle for Irish freedom. They knew what they were doing. They knew the enemy. The enemy was imperialism. Their enemy was the Empire which tried to make them out as criminals. Margaret Thatcher represented the old enemy being the complete imperialist. The hunger strike was the ultimate act of resistance to British imperialism.
The republican prisoners in Long Kesh were involved in the long struggle against the British. They understood their history. They knew about previous hunger strikes. They respected those who had died for freedom and justice in Ireland in the long struggle. Those who gave their lives on hunger strike were held in the highest esteem.
These men were brought up in the Catholic/Christian tradition where they would have learned something about sacrifice and suffering. It is a big theme in Catholic theology. They may or may not have been practicing Catholics, but they had been influenced since childhood by the Catholic ethos emphasizing commitment and sacrifice. They understood protest and fasting. And as Bobby Sands said to one of the chaplains, quoting from the Gospel: “Greater love than this no man has than to lay down his life for his friends.” They protested for their political convictions of course, but I believe that when they endured the awful suffering and the lingering deaths of the hunger strikes that they did so for their fellow prisoners, as much as for the wider political ideals that they shared.
They did not wish to die. They wanted to put pressure on the British to reverse the policy of criminalisation. The British government –and not for the first time- tried to make out that the republican struggle was a criminal conspiracy and that these prisoners were criminals and not as they saw themselves as political prisoners. The Irish republican prisoners were not ever going to accept that. It would mean criminalising the long struggle for Irish freedom for which so many had died over many centuries. The crisis that took place in the H-Blocks was a crisis deliberately manufactured by the deliberate policy of the British state in trying to criminalise the Irish struggle. Even the British army later in 2006 fully accepted the political basis for that struggle.
Looking back at the suffering of the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and wives and children of each of the prisoners on hunger strike, my main feeling is one of sadness, and also of anger at the way they were isolated and left to fight on their own. We must never forget the uncaring attitude of the Dublin government and the hostility of the Dublin-based media.
Nevertheless, the Irish struggle won many new friends in many different parts of the world – in South Africa, Palestine, Cuba, the Basque region and Catalonia, to name but a few.
What about the hunger strikers who died in De Valera’s jails and whose conditions were worsened so they would die quicker. An Irish government can be as brutal as a British Imperialist government.
“The pain is still there. I meet relatives of those who died and I sense their pain. I met with Bik McFarlane, the leader of the prisoners during the hunger strike, several times recently and I still sense his hurt and sadness.”
Their pain was self-inflicted. The pain of their victims was not.
.”I also sense his pride and determination and an amazing lack of bitterness.”
Why would he be bitter?
“I also notice the hostility within sections of the unionist community, some of whom speak in disparaging terms about those who died on hunger strike. They do not appear to want to understand the historical and political background.”
There should be hostility within all sections of society. Society should disparage and condemn a most despicable event that sought perversely to portray perpetrators ad victims and sought to legitimise a monstrous terror campaign.
People are well aware of the historical and political background.
“They did what they did for the greater good and for generations to come.”
What good came of it?
“They wanted to progress the struggle for Irish freedom. They knew what they were doing. They knew the enemy. The enemy was imperialism. Their enemy was the Empire which tried to make them out as criminals.”
There was no empire and they were criminals. They were all convicted if various serious crimes, including murder.
“These men were brought up in the Catholic/Christian tradition where they would have learned something about sacrifice and suffering. It is a big theme in Catholic theology. They may or may not have been practicing Catholics, but they had been influenced since childhood by the Catholic ethos emphasizing commitment and sacrifice. They understood protest and fasting. And as Bobby Sands said to one of the chaplains, quoting from the Gospel: “Greater love than this no man has than to lay down his life for his friends.” ”
One wonders why they dispensed with Christian teaching about killing and violence and ignored the request of their own church to stop and that church’s instruction that their campaign was against Christian teaching.
“They did not wish to die.”
Woops.
“They wanted to put pressure on the British to reverse the policy of criminalisation.”
They criminalised themselves when they committed crimes. The “British” didn’t criminalise them. If you can’t do the time don’t do the crime.
“The British government –and not for the first time- tried to make out that the republican struggle was a criminal conspiracy and that these prisoners were criminals and not as they saw themselves as political prisoners.”
But they were criminals. They had all.committed and been convicted of criminal acts. They may have committed those terrible acts for political reasons but motive doesn’t change the fact that they were crimes. Political prisoners are those who are imprisoned because of their political views. All of these people were imprisoned after being sentenced for criminal convictions. The concept.’political prisoner’ is cheapened when criminals.such as this try to claim the status.
Something tells me your a bit rattled MT, you see, this was the real success of the hunger strikers. The fact that you’re on the back foot says it all.
Now let’s see more steam from them ears………..”when Irish Eyes are smiling, la la la la la la la………”
But I’m not on the back foot.
One of the furniture stores Sands bombed was one my cousin worked for. So here we have a radicalized republican and alleged socialist trying to destroy the lives of innocent Protestant working class men and women. Proof that radicalization of republicans, like that after the these 10 died. Leads to sectarian Sinn Fein/IRA and republican violence.
Recently, we had another death cult self-harm and suicide parade from Sinn Fein/IRA, a parade that included leading members of Sinn Fein/IRA including our deputy first minister who sits in government with Unionists. We have also had our health minister Michelle O’Neill, as the key note speaker at other republican suicide and self-harm events. So now we have a political party it’s elected members their ministers in government including our health minister and their former education minister all supporting self-harm and suicide as a legitimate political tactic and stagey. Perverse to say the least.
Republican parades’ and events that promote suicide and self-harm as a legitimate and strategic political tactic.
As a society we warn our young and vulnerable on the dangers and misuse of illegal and prescription drugs. Yet Sinn Fein/IRA promote suicide and self-harm as a positive form of political activity. Something they promote, with marches, speeches, dressing up all focused at the very people we warn about suicide and self-harm.
Surely Sinn Fein/IRA should not be promoting or supporting suicide and self-harm for political or any ends. They should never promote or elevate those from within their community who committed suicide and self-harm as positive role models. Not for their own community or to the wider community.
The Sinn Fein/IRA and republican positive portrayal of these advocates of suicide and self-harm must surely have a negative impact on the young and vulnerable within their community as well as the wider community. It must also be added that they can also be influencing the very young who are being given the wrong positive impression of these men.
Sands is now the Sinn Fein/IRA poster boy promoting a death cult within republicanism. A death cult that glorifies suicide and self-harm as a legitimate political tactic and strategy. Sands is painted on gable walls and has memorials to his success, the success of death by suicide and self-harm. A republican poster boy for suicide and self-harm, an inspiration to republican youth who can now see how suicide and self-harm can make you tomorrow’s republican “hero” and “icon”. A suicide and self-harm success that sells trinkets and burbles for Sinn Fein/IRA to those who see a suicide as a strike against the establishment. The very establishment Sinn Fein/IRA are now fully established in government in.
Sands was used and died for a set of objectives all of which have been discarded, Sinn Fein/IRA, they surrendered to the British, decommission their weapons and Semtex, become ministers in a British regional assembly, administrating British rule in Ireland, and fully signed up to Brinish policing and justice.
This same British policing and justice system that Sands attacked, using gun, bomb and self-harm and suicide. Is imprisoning republicans without any special category status. The same special category status he committed self-harm and suicide for. We must ask did Sands self-harm and suicide along with the other 9 move their aims one iota?
A week or so ago the shinners/provos met in a plush comfy seated cinema, to munch on their popcorn, M&M’s and cheese and onion crisps which they washed down with lashings of coke. They took their comfy seats to watch a film on the cult of Bobby Sands and to marvel in the slow death of one of their own. Sands the most negative role model that republican communities and desperate vulnerable republican youths can have.
The shinners/provos cult of promoting self-harm and suicide as a political tactic, is a means to a very permanent end. It surely can’t be a positive image for impressionable and vulnerable youth’s in republican areas to see Sands self-harm and suicide in comics and on film??? Showing Sands self-harm and suicide as a positive, must surely have a negative impact on those young republicans contemplating their own self-harm and suicide. The Sinn Fein/IRA and republican cult of Sands must surely be costing young republican lives.
Can this cult of Sands and the other 9 republican self-harm and suicide exponents, explain why suicide in republican areas is the highest in Northern Ireland??? The cult support of Sands and the other republicans who committed self-harm and suicide, are surely the most negative role models any community can have. An alleged “icon” within the republican community whose greatest achievement was to self-harm and ultimately commit suicide. A slow self-harm and suicide over 66 days used as political propaganda, and all so that he could wear his own clothes. Hardly the role model one would want for an alleged progressive thinking republican youth and community.
What is Sands lasting legacy, and that of the other 9 who committed self-harm and suicide alongside him. As I mentioned above, republican areas have the high rates of suicide in Northern Ireland. Suicide that republicans canonized Sands and the other 9 for. On the political side, we now have Sinn Fein/IRA in government as British ministers administering British’s rule and fully supporting and endorsing policing and justice, and this must be the biggest irony of the lot. The very same justice system Sands and the other 9 refused to conform with, has now got Sinn Fein/IRA sitting on the policing board. Endorsing the arrest trial and imprisonment of republicans, and no special category status.
There is one thing that Sands is useful for and that is to radicalize the next generations of republican youth and as a propaganda tool for generating money.
Surely this is contrary to everything Sands committed his slow suicide for??? Who is laughing now!!!!!
Jude you posted a few days ago about being prolife now you are extoling the virtues of 10 men who took their own lives for narrow selfish political ends. The elephant in your blog is, can you explain to us how you can be prolife at the start of live but not years later when 10 republicans engaged in self-harm and suicide for narrow political ends? You are ether prolife all the time or are you just selective life for as long as it’s for republican political ends???
https://thebrokenelbow.com/2016/02/26/that-bobby-sands-book-the-sands-family-and-the-bobby-sands-trust/
https://thebrokenelbow.com/2016/03/03/the-bobby-sands-trust-a-need-to-get-answers-to-troubling-questions/
https://thebrokenelbow.com/2016/04/02/open-letter-to-the-bobby-sands-trust/
https://thebrokenelbow.com/2016/04/19/bobby-sands-trust-licenses-hunger-strikers-prison-diary-to-make-new-movie/
Has Slugger O’Toole lent you a couple of their lunatics for an hour or two,Jude?
Not a Bible basher but ” God forgive them for they know not what they do” Jude how can converse with these neanderthal s. Another vile by-product of colonialism
I was a young man during the hunger strikes, I remember the previous one that ended just before Christmas 1980, I followed it day and daily along with all the war news from the conflict, I remember the day the 1981 strike started, little did I or anyone else know it would become one of the most pivotal moments in the history of Ireland. Buying the Irish News every day, because although it was by no means a Republican newspaper, unlike the other papers available it did not scream Fenian bastard with every story and photo. The real politicisation of the nationalist people began that Spring when Bobby Sands started his protest. To those who say `oh, they were criminals/terrorists, convicted of serious crimes` I say, no, actually they were OUR good guys, your beloved RUC/UDR/Brits were the real terrorists, your corrupt judges and Diplock courts were never legitimate, we will NEVER accept your biased view of history, learn from your mistakes, God bless Bobby Sands and his comrades.
MT VESSELS MAKE THE MOST NOISE
It is easy to say these men were all convicted criminals. Lets look at the quality of the convictions. Juryless Diplock courts, Special Powers Act, Coerced confessions etc. as the song goes:
“It all began one morning, I was dragged to Castlereaigh
And though it was three years ago , it seems like yesterday
For three days kicked and beaten, I then was forced to sign,
Confessions that convicted me for crimes that were not mine”
“It is easy to say these men were all convicted criminals. Lets look at the quality of the convictions. Juryless Diplock courts, Special Powers Act, Coerced confessions etc. as the song goes:”
The Special Powers Act had been repealed before these men were convicted. There is nothing inherently improper about a juryless court: it’s the norm outside the anglosphere.
But are you saying the hunger strikers didn’t commit these crimes?
Is this Joe McVeigh a Catholic priest.What about the sanctity of life and forget this IS type martyrdom. Has McVeigh ever written about the massacre of the innocents in Enniskillen,where those who died had no choice whether they lived or died.