On the 1st of March 25 years ago.....

[Bellaghybhoy]

In memory of the beginning of his brave struggle.

Tiocfaidh Ar La

Sunday 1st March

I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.

My heart is very sore because I know that I have broken my poor mother's heart, and my home is struck with unbearable anxiety. But I have considered all the arguments and tried every means to avoid what has become the unavoidable: it has been forced upon me and my comrades by four-and-a-half years of stark inhumanity.

I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.

I believe and stand by the God-given right of the Irish nation to sovereign independence, and the right of any Irishman or woman to assert this right in armed revolution. That is why I am incarcerated, naked and tortured.

Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought that there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.

I believe I am but another of those wretched Irishmen born of a risen generation with a deeply rooted and unquenchable desire for freedom. I am dying not just to attempt to end the barbarity of H-Block, or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner, but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed whom I am deeply proud to know as the 'risen people'.

There is no sensation today, no novelty that October 27th brought. (The starting date of the original seven man hunger-strike) The usual Screws were not working. The slobbers and would-be despots no doubt will be back again tomorrow, bright and early.

I wrote some more notes to the girls in Armagh today. There is so much I would like to say about them, about their courage, determination and unquenchable spirit of resistance. They are to be what Countess Markievicz, Anne Devlin, Mary Ann McCracken, Marie MacSwiney, Betsy Gray, and those other Irish heroines are to us all. And, of course, I think of Ann Parker, Laura Crawford, Rosemary Bleakeley, and I'm ashamed to say I cannot remember all their sacred names.

Mass was solemn, the lads as ever brilliant. I ate the statutory weekly bit of fruit last night. As fate had it, it was an orange, and the final irony, it was bitter. The food is being left at the door. My portions, as expected, are quite larger than usual, or those which my cell-mate Malachy is getting.


Bobby Sands


**Thanks to C-S for this**

[hiding behind a poster]

Two things -


1) Aren't there enough hunger strike threads running already? Especially if we're gonna get a string of them commemorating deaths in a couple of months.

2) Aren't we a bit obsessed with looking back at anniversaries, commemorating, etc, etc.? We're only gonna make progress with Irish unity when we start looking forwards, not backwards.

[eurocrat]

2) Aren't we a bit obsessed with looking back at anniversaries, commemorating, etc, etc.? We're only gonna make progress with Irish unity when we start looking forwards, not backwards.

'Those who forget the past are condemed to repeat it' We need the remember why we go through this peace process - to stop crap like this happening again.

I would like to think that in 2023 we will commemerate the Omagh bombings. Don't see why the death of a hugely influencial person like Sands should be forgotten.

Their is a class of Irish person the gets very uncomfortable with commemeration of Sands, 1916 etc. They feel it somehow condones IRA voilence of the past 30 years. I don't see it that way. The story of Bobby Sands is tragic. A young gifted man who got caught up in an old conflict. I think he and the other victims of the troubles deserve to be remembered.

[Bellaghybhoy]

[quote="hiding behind a poster"]Two things -


1) Aren't there enough hunger strike threads running already? Especially if we're gonna get a string of them commemorating deaths in a couple of months.


Tell me, what constitutes "Enough"? Am I taking up some of your space on the net?

Say what you really think.

[badinage]

There is a class of Irish person the gets very uncomfortable with commemeration of Sands, 1916 etc. They feel it somehow condones IRA voilence of the past 30 years. I don't see it that way. The story of Bobby Sands is tragic. A young gifted man who got caught up in an old conflict. I think he and the other victims of the troubles deserve to be remembered.

I think the Hunger Strikes should be remembered, but its important to remember also that they radicalised the IRA and the republican struggle at a time when it was faltering, causing the Troubles to drag on for another 13 years and causing another thousand people to die and thousands more had their lives ruined by being injured or losing a loved one.

[bobbysands81]

There is a class of Irish person the gets very uncomfortable with commemeration of Sands, 1916 etc. They feel it somehow condones IRA voilence of the past 30 years. I don't see it that way. The story of Bobby Sands is tragic. A young gifted man who got caught up in an old conflict. I think he and the other victims of the troubles deserve to be remembered.

I think the Hunger Strikes should be remembered, but its important to remember also that they radicalised the IRA and the republican struggle at a time when it was faltering, causing the Troubles to drag on for another 13 years and causing another thousand people to die and thousands more had their lives ruined by being injured or losing a loved one.

Do you really think that?

I'd take the opposite view, that the Hunger Strikers, or more importantly Kieran Nugent refusing to wear the "convict's uniform", were the catalyst for the politicisation of the Republican movement and actually lead to peace process on this island.

10 fantastic men, Ireland's bravest.

[hiding behind a poster]

[

'Those who forget the past are condemed to repeat it' We need the remember why we go through this peace process - to stop crap like this happening again.

I would like to think that in 2023 we will commemerate the Omagh bombings. Don't see why the death of a hugely influencial person like Sands should be forgotten.

I think there's a huge difference between commemorating dead from the Omagh bombing on the one hand, and idolising the hunger-strikers on the other. Because the fact is that there's a thread of hard-line violent republicanism, rejecting the democratic will of people North and South, that runs through Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers, and ultimately finds its expression in the Omagh bombing. And given that the Irish people, North and South, have endorsed the principle of consent in both jurisdictions, there can now be no justification whatsoever for the use of violence to achieve political ends - but glorification of perpetrators of said violence implies that such violence is still somehow acceptable.

In my opinion we need a much longer period of peace, and a sort of "de-sectarianisation" of Northen Ireland, before we start commemorating anything from the troubles - and when we do, it should be universal and inclusive, rather than commemorating one side's events or figures.

It ties into what I've referred to on other threads - namely the fact that unity in Ireland, if ever delivered, will be neither delivered by Sinn Fein nor negotiated by the DUP - both parties have entrenched themselves so firmly in a sectarian view of past, present and future that they have simply deepened the hatred and division felt by the other side. It is only when a truly non-sectarian movement emerges and gains strength in Northern Ireland that we'll see any real progress towards unity. When that movement might emerge is anyone's guess.

[eurocrat]

I think the Hunger Strikes should be remembered, but its important to remember also that they radicalised the IRA and the republican struggle at a time when it was faltering, causing the Troubles to drag on for another 13 years and causing another thousand people to die and thousands more had their lives ruined by being injured or losing a loved one.

Well then we get onto the issue of how something should be remembered. I watched during the summer at the astonishing scenes of the British Navy 'celebrating' (that was the word they used) thier victory in Traflarger. War should not be celebrated, but commemerated.

Here too, we need to commemerate the teh death of Bobby Sands and recognise it as a low point in the sad history of the troubles. As you said it radicalised opinion in the North (and Republic too) regarding IRA violence. However we cannot blame Sands himself for that. Obviously the Governments of the day did not help the situation.

It is not helpful for radical sections of NI for hijack the death of a man and use it as a propaganda tool. However this is what happens in the absense of offical commemeration.

[DOD]

There is a class of Irish person the gets very uncomfortable with commemeration of Sands, 1916 etc. They feel it somehow condones IRA voilence of the past 30 years. I don't see it that way. The story of Bobby Sands is tragic. A young gifted man who got caught up in an old conflict. I think he and the other victims of the troubles deserve to be remembered.

I think the Hunger Strikes should be remembered, but its important to remember also that they radicalised the IRA and the republican struggle at a time when it was faltering, causing the Troubles to drag on for another 13 years and causing another thousand people to die and thousands more had their lives ruined by being injured or losing a loved one.

You can't blame that on the hunger strikes per se, it is more to do with the proliferation of the conditions that caused the hunger strike. Had those conditions not existed, the hunger strikes would not have begun and maybe those who joined the struggle as a result might not have.

As republicans, I think it is imperative to remember the hunger strikers. (Although one thread is enough.)

[zakalwe]

i admire their courage and strength of opinion.

i'm not sure if the people of this nation or the majority of the people in the north accept his statement that "there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically". The GFA solidifies British presence here, esp in the short term. I'm not sure if the majority of the people in the south really want a united ireland at present. most people, myself included, want to see a UI some time into the future but we don't want the north in its current state. as someone elequantly put it (when discussing iraq and the us responsibility) "if you break it, you buy it". we fully expect britian to hand over a mature, stable peaceful province, not the current hotbed of criminal activity and civil disorder.