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Showing posts with label Bobby Sands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bobby Sands. Show all posts
Dixie Elliot ✍ I recently became aware of a video which was posted on YouTube during the week by Sinn Fein titled, ‘Hunger Striker Sean McKenna remembered by his comrade Danny Morrison.’ 


Danny Morrison, Sinn Fein’s Director of Revisionism, walked among the graves of the Republican dead in Milltown Cemetery and once again lied in regards to the ending of the first hunger strike back in December 1980, laying the blame for it’s failure on Brendan Hughes.

If that was sickening enough, seeing him using the name of the late Sean McKenna to sell this lie added to my anger. The grave robbers Burke and Hare had more respect for the dead.

According to Morrison:

. . . The following night the British government were due, through an emissary, to deliver a document to the hunger strikers. Before the document arrived, the hunger strike was called off by Brendan Hughes. The document arrived and Bobby Sands was sent for. All the promises of a progressive prison liberal regime were now, that the British government knew that the hunger strike was over and all those people who said they would intervene and support the prisoners and would support reforms, they all disappeared . . . 

The thing about the truth is that you cannot get caught out telling it, something Morrison can’t seem to get his head around as he’s a habitual liar and the above statement is full of holes, big holes.

I stated many times, given my huge respect for Brendan Hughes, a leader who always led from the front, that any attempt to smear his name regarding how that hunger strike came to an end would be met with the truth and the only ones to blame for this are the liars like Morrison.

However, the one very important person who exposes Morrison’s lie regarding how that hunger strike ended was Bobby Sands himself. I will get to that soon.

Take for example Morrison’s claim, ‘the document arrived and Bobby Sands was sent for…’

No thought whatsoever has gone into that particular lie. Father Meagher received the document at Belfast airport from ‘The Mountain Climber.’  He then took it to Adams and others who were waiting in Clonard Monastery. As they were looking over it Tom Hartley entered the room and told them that the hunger strike was over.

The document contained nothing, it merely indicated that prisoners could wear ‘civilian-type’ clothing during the working week. That was another form of prison uniform.

Bobby had been sent for when the hunger strike ended and he had no document because it was still in the hands of Gerry Adams in Clonard Monastery. The source for this is Adams himself in his book, A Farther Shore.

Why would Bobby return to our wing that night and tell desperate men in Irish that, “ní fhuaireamar feic.” (we got nothing) if there was even the slightest of chances that some British offer gave us some hope of ending the blanket protest? Why did Bobby then sit down on his mattress and start writing a comm to Gerry Adams informing him that he would be leading another hunger strike which would begin on January 1st instead of waiting to see if the Brits kept to their promises? Because they had made none. That hunger strike ended because, as Sean McKenna was nearing death, some men told Brendan they were coming of it, leaving The Dark with no other choice but to end it before Sean died needlessly.

In fact, Bobby told Adams exactly that in the comm he was writing to him. (see screenshots taken from page 305, Chapter 21; Nothing But An Unfinished Song, below).

. . . I don’t believe we can achieve our our aims or recoup our losses in the light of what has occurred. Sooner, rather than later, our defeat will be exposed. When I say, in the light of what has occurred, I mean not only the boys breaking but perhaps our desperate attempts to salvage something . . . 

Adams, Morrison and the others knew how it ended from the time they read that comm from Bobby, yet they persist in the lie that Brendan Hughes had ended it and was therefore responsible for the second hunger strike which claimed the lives of ten brave men. They do this because The Dark died with his principles intact and he never betrayed his dead comrades for political or financial gain and he didn’t hold back, while he lived, in telling the truth.

Given that he also knew the truth, yet was only too willing to promote this lie at his master’s behest, I have no problem in naming Raymond McCartney as being one of those men who told Brendan they were coming off that hunger strike.

Near the end of the video Morrison tells anyone foolish enough to believe him that Bobby’s election victory paved the way for Sinn Féin’s move towards electoral politics. He would have you believe that the hunger strikes were part of a long term strategy to bring Sinn Féin into government in the Stormont it was determined to ‘smash’ back then, and to take their seats with the Free Staters, who had sided with the British against their own people in the North.

According to Morrison:

…The election of Bobby Sands, on the 9th April 1981, provided the springboard for Sinn Féin to adopt it’s electoral strategy, the fruits of which we see today… 

Bobby only stood in that election in the hope that victory would mean that Thatcher couldn’t possibly let a sitting MP die on hunger strike. This of course proved not to be the case, as she was a vindicative evil bitch.

However, even while the hunger strike was still ongoing, Adams and his inner-circle, which of course included Morrison, began to furtively lay the path which would take an unwitting Republican Movement onto the road of electoral politics. Three days after the death of Michael Devine, on the same day that Owen Carron won the bye-election for Bobby’s vacant seat in Fermanagh/South Tyrone, Sinn Féin announced that in future it would contest all ‘Northern Ireland’ elections. 

The hunger strike was still ongoing and this decision had not been to put to the Movement as a whole because that year’s Ard Fheis would not be until late October. Michael Devine had barely been lowered into his grave as they ‘seized the opportunity’ to set their ‘electoral strategy’ in motion. It comes as no surprise that it was Morrison who would ask the delegates at that Ard Fheis if anyone there would object if they took power in Ireland with a ballot paper in one hand and the Armalite in the other.

We all know what eventually happened to the Armalite. They decommissioned it, as did they the right to call themselves Republicans by attending the coronation of the British king, Charles.

Thanks to the family of Bobby Sands, who had only recently found out themselves by uncovering one of his prison comms in the National Archives, we now know he had requested that he be buried in Ballina beside Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan, because he didn’t like Milltown Cemetery. Bobby also requested that he ‘wanted wrapped in a blanket cause I don’t want humiliated in a stinkin’ suit or shroud.’

Danny Morrison tried to claim that Bobby had later changed his mind about Ballina by coming up with a few lines which he claimed were contained in a comm from Bobby, but the comm he referred to did not in fact include those lines in both the books it was included in, Ten Men Dead and Nothing But An Unfinished Song.

What he could not lie about was that Bobby’s simple request, that he be wrapped in a blanket because he didn’t want humiliated in a stinkin’ suit or shroud, was denied him. Bobby Sands was highly intelligent and he would have fully realised that the screws would not have handed over a prison blanket for him to be laid to rest in. He was obviously referring to a similar type of blanket which would be symbolic of the protest which took up the final years of his life.

Bobby Sands was buried in a shroud and his family weren’t made aware of his final request.

Excerpt from Bury Me In My Blanket by Bobby Sands:

I've thought about that too,” I said, “and it's hard to say to oneself that one is prepared to go to such an extreme, but then we are special prisoners and we are struggling for a special cause, so if I should die here, tell “Mr Mason” to bury me in my blanket . . . ” 

 

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

More Lies Morrison

James Kearney ✒ shares a letter he penned to Bobby Sands in April 2006.
 
Mo chara, I still think of you with love and affection after all these long years. In many ways I feel disconnected since you left in May 1981. It's been, and still is, a strange feeling.

I still think a lot about that day in February 1981 when we met for the last time at Sunday mass in the canteen: when we shook hands and you, more or less, bade goodbye to each of us that morning. What a feeling! If I could, mo chara, I would bring you back to life, so all of this pain and inner sorrow, which at times plights my life, could end.

I have to tell you that when you died (the Dark, Brendan Hughes, shouted the news down the wing that morning), I didn't cry, but silently thought to myself that you had escaped Criminalisation and had left us to face the battle on our own. A selfish thought I suppose. But now, in the fullness of time, I realise that in death you and the boys broke our chains and forever set us free. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

I have tried to live a good life, one which would make you proud. The values which we shared in the H Blocks - honour, brotherhood, integrity, courage and grit determination, I still aspire to in civilian life. My reference point has always been the Blanket protest in the H Blocks and the lessons learnt then have guided me ever since.

Sometimes when I am in bed during the stillness of the night, I can hear you speak to my heart. And there are times I feel your presence so close to me that I reach out to touch you. It's not so strange, I tell myself, because wasn't it you who told us not to worry about death? For rebels like us never really die - we live on in the hearts and minds of those we have touched on this earth.

Growing tired again mo chara, it's late and another day dawns. Looking forward to the day when I will see your face again. So until then, keep watching over me and give me the strength to carry on.

Love, Seamus. xxx

Bobby Sands

Seamus Kearney

⏩ James Kearney is a former Blanketman.
 

A Letter To Bobby

James Kearney ✒ When I arrived into H1 from Crumlin Road Prison, I was introduced to the Wing OC, Bobby Sands, who gave me a run- down on the situation prevailing at that time. 

I also met for the first time, Tom McElwee from South Derry and Kevin Lynch from Dungiven in North Derry. All three men would later die on hunger strike four years later in the Prison hospital.
 
The wing we were in also contained Loyalist remand prisoners like ourselves, a mixture of UDA and UVF men. But one Loyalist stood out among the rest,  a ruggedly handsome fellow called Lenny Murphy, who was in charge of the UVF prisoners. He was quite the charmer and wouldn't allow any of us Republicans to walk by him without saying hello.

At the dinner table in the wing canteen I sat facing Bobby Sands and Gerard Hanratty, while to my right sat Sean McClenaghan (Sam Foot). During our meals Bobby would be talkative, asking about who was coming up to see me on the visits, enquiring about whether my mother was going to send up more of her delicious pork and onion roll etc. He was always rather cautious about discussing politics because of the Loyalists in the canteen with us and was more inclined to talk about football results, or continue the search for the lyrics of a song he had heard on the radio.

I remember vividly one afternoon in the canteen, after Bobby returned from a visit with his wife Geraldine, the look of sadness on his strained face as he sat down facing me. When Sean McClenaghan -  who was Bobby's cell mate at the time, inquired about the visit, Bobby replied: "She said she is not coming back and that the marriage is over! " There was an immediate silence from around the table. As I looked into Bobby's eyes and saw the look of despair in them, I felt an incredible sense of sadness for him and thanked the Gods that I was single and unattached.

One afternoon while Bobby, Sean and myself walked in circles around the exercise yard we were joined by Lenny Murphy, who greeted Bobby in a friendly manner and began complaining about the lack of discipline among his own men. He went on:

I can't knock this rabble of mine into shape, these so called Loyalists of mine are a disgrace and an embarrassment, unlike the Republicans under your command Bobby. Now, they are soldiers who respond to discipline.

When I glanced at Bobby I was surprised to see him empathise with Lenny and nod his head in agreement.

The discussion then turned to the subject of the Shankill Butchers and the identity of "Mister X ", the mastermind behind the gruesome operation. However, Lenny went on to castigate those responsible and described the Butchers as pure animals and psychopaths, and we all agreed. It was only years later that the identity of "Mister X " was revealed, leading to the execution of the Master Butcher, Lenny Murphy, by the Provisional IRA in November 1982.


As the summer of 1977 wore on, the days became warmer and the nights even more so. In August the
"King of Rock and Roll", Elvis Presley, died of a heart attack and left all of us music lovers, including Bobby Sands, devastated. 

As we contemplated the death of Elvis, little did we know the death and horror which awaited us on the road ahead. As we lay on our backs listening to Bobby strumming his guitar, I for one thought of home and the loved ones I had left behind. I am certain Bobby felt the same.


⏩ James Kearney is a former Blanketman.

Strange Encounters ➖ H Block 1 ➖ Long Kesh Prison Camp ➖ June / July 1977

James Kearney ✒ with some prose addressed to his late comrade, Bobby Sands. 


After meeting him for the last time in H6, in February 1981, we shook hands and parted company. I was never to see my comrade, Bobby Sands, again. However, his spirit never left me and continues to guide and inspire me on my road through life, a road which hopefully will lead to his dream and mine, reaching our final destination - a Free and United Ireland. 
Never despair.
Never give up.
Never lose hope.


It doesn't seem quite so long ago, the last time that I saw you,
Isn't it funny how the memories grow, seems they always fold around you.
They tried to break you in a living hell, but couldn't find a way,
so instead they killed you in a H Block cell and hoped that all would turn away.

And they thought your spirit couldn't rise again, 
but you dared to prove them wrong, 
And in death you tore away our chains, 
to let the world hear Freedom's song.

Yes the heartache and the pain still linger on, 
they're still here,
though it's so long since you've gone, 
but we're stronger now, 
you showed us how, 
Freedom's fight can be won.

I wish there was an easy road to choose, to bring this heartache to an end, 
but easy roads are always sure to lose, 
I've seen it time and time again.
 
If you could stand by me like yesterday, 
I would find the strength to carry on, 
and with your spirit lighting up the way, 
then I know our day would surely come.

But the heartache and the pain still linger on, 
they're still here, 
though it's so long since you've gone. 
But we're stronger now,
you showed us how, 
Freedom's fight can be won, 

... if we all stand as one.

⏩ James Kearney is a former Blanketman. 

The Mists Of Time {1981 - 2021}

Anthony McIntyre ✒ is of the view that the issue of Bobby Sand's funeral wishes is far from being resolved.  

Forty years after his death, Bobby Sands remains a figure of considerable interest both at home and abroad. His courage, unquenchable thirst for justice, and unalloyed selflessness continue to inspire awe and reverence. Those of us who took part in the blanket protest with him are forever poised, heads bowed in respect for the tremendous act of dignified defiance that ended his short life. 

Bobby died on peaceful protest against the British men and women of violence. Whatever prompted Jim Gibney to say he didn’t really want to talk about him again, it is not a sentiment shared by me or many other blanketmen. The name Bobby Sands will always have a place in our conversation until the end of our time.

While the armed struggle that he was part of failed to coerce the British out of Ireland, failed to coerce the North into a unitary state, and failed to end partition, he and his nine comrades very successfully prevented that struggle from being portrayed by the British as an aggravated crime wave. In 1971 a republican weekly paper made the observation that funny how it is that all the countries Britain occupies are suddenly filled with criminal types. Max Stirner whose death preceded that of Bobby Sands by more than a century intuited the cynical penchant for skewing on the part of officialdom: “The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.” Bobby Sands is the epitome of everything that is not a criminal enterprise. 

The fortieth anniversary of the late IRA volunteer saw the emergence of a previously unpublished comm penned by him a week before he commenced his hunger strike. In it he expressed a strong desire to be buried in a place other than Milltown Cemetery to which he harboured an aversion. His preference was Ballina where the previous two Provisional IRA hunger strikers, Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg, are interred. He also asked not to be wrapped in a shroud but a blanket. The idea of a shroud he found humiliating.

His remains being wrapped in a blanket was not a shock. The blanket had defined the prison protest and he identified as a blanketman, even telling British secretary of state Roy Mason "bury me in my blanket." What very much did jolt the senses was his wish not to be buried in Milltown. Speaking to a former prisoner the other day, Alex McCrory, the view was expressed to me that being buried in Milltown seemed the best strategic choice to make if the lives of the other three men on hunger strike were to stand any chance of being saved. A massive display of public solidarity in Belfast with the hunger strikers and their cause was indispensable if the British Prime Minister was to be forced to step back from her determined position of allowing all the men to die.

It is a perspective I wholly concur with. Whether this was discussed with Bobby Sands by the republican leaders strategically managing the hunger strike, we do not know. There seem to be no comms which allow us to draw a conclusion one way or the other. What we are left with is the expressed preference of Bobby Sands not to be buried in Milltown.

The Bobby Sands Trust and Sinn Fein have both responded to the emergence of the comm. Michelle O’Neill in dismissing its publication as crass claimed to have “seen other communications where Bobby obviously changed his wishes in terms of his burial requests.” Perhaps she should share them because thus far nothing has been produced that would show Bobby Sands assenting to be buried in Milltown or in a shroud.

Sinn Fein claimed that:

He wrote in comms about the possibility of being buried in Carnmoney, of somewhere in the South and specifically of Ballina. However he changed his mind on each in turn and in the last comm dated 9 March where Ballina is referenced he explicitly states that he has changed his mind.

What we now know is that Bobby changed his mind from being buried in Ballina. We just do not know what he changed it to. We have seen nothing from Sinn Fein to show that he changed his mind “on each in turn”. If he did where is the evidence to support this claim? Given his closeness to his sister, Faughart in County Louth remains a strong possibility. There is nothing to indicate he had a change of mind or heart about that. If he changed his mind on Faughart where is the comm showing it? If he changed his mind on Milltown, again where is the comm to show this?

Danny Morrison was, unusually for him, fairly measured in his response, sticking to detail rather than smearing those who published the comm or spoke to the media about it. Yet, like O’Neill and Sinn Fein, he has singularly failed to sound convincing. He claimed it was assumed that Belfast republicans would be buried in Milltown. As far as an assumption goes it seems a fair enough one to have made. But if it was an assumption, where now the Sinn Fein claim that Bobby changed his mind? If he did change his mind about Milltown and informed the leadership about it, there would have been no need to assume. What is not an assumption is that the Hunger Strike Committee was in possession of the comm where Bobby Sands specifically objected to a Milltown burial. That comm was never made public, was withheld from the Sands family, and was only discovered fortuitously in the National Archive in Dublin.

Morrison, when speaking to the Irish News, obliquely had a go at Marcella and Bernadette Sands, sisters of Bobby. He claimed that when they both sat on the Bobby Sands Trust they did not raise their brother’s final resting place as an issue. Why would they when they were never told that Bobby had objected to Milltown? The Hunger Strike Committee of which Morrison was a member, however, did know about this at the time but never told the family. Moreover, Morrison had to have known since the death of Rosaleen Sands in 2018 that the family were in possession of information indicating that her son's funeral wishes had been subverted. Never once did he comment about this on the Bobby Sands Trust website. Nor did he publish on the same website the eulogy delivered by Bernadette to her mother. 

There is one way to settle the matter - produce the comms in their entirety: not excerpts, not redactions, just the full, uncensored words of Bobby Sands. He worked hard enough to produce them. Why hide them? Let us leave the matter concluding that only Roy Mason, Humphrey Atkins, Margaret Thatcher and their ilk wanted the words of Bobby Sands silenced. 

 ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Just The Full Uncensored Words Of Bobby Sands

Fra Hughes looks back on the 1981 hunger strike.


"They will not criminalise us, rob us of our true identity, steal our individualism, depoliticise us, churn us out as systemised, institutionalised, decent law-abiding robots. Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminal.” - Bobby Sands

The 1980 Hunger strike led by Brendan Hughes comprised of seven Republican male prisoners at Her Majesty's Cellular Prison The Maze also known as Long Kesh Prison Camp, and three female Republican prisoners at Armagh Women's Prison ended on December 1980 after 53 days.

An agreement was reached between the protesting prisoners, the prison authorities and by extension the British Government ending the Hunger Strike. The prisoners were demanding the reinstatement of Special Category Status, where Republican volunteers jailed for opposing - politically and militarily - the British occupation of Ireland were treated as POWs / Prisoners of War.

After the introduction of internment in 1971 where citizens of the state, mainly Catholics with no criminal records, were incarcerated without trial, having been convicted of no crime nor charged with any offence in Long Kesh prison camp, these prisoners who were basically deprived of their liberty were allowed to wear their own clothes, have free association within the camp, drill, exercise and hold educational classes. They ran the internment huts independently of the prison regime. Long Kesh had been used previously as a military camp and was brought into service as a make shift prison camp along with a Royal Navy Ship berthed in Belfast Harbour known as The Prison Ship Maidstone.

Both these facilities were needed because of the level of violence being exerted in society by the revolutionary Irish Republican Army and the counter revolutionary British Government, armed and endorsed Ulster Defense Association and the more violent Ulster Volunteer Force.

Long Kesh Prison Camp

Republican volunteers who were convicted of politically or militarily opposing the continued British Military occupation of the North East of Ireland known as Northern Ireland who were imprisoned in Long Kesh Camp were denied the Special Category Status enjoyed by the Internees.

Following a Hunger Strike by Republican Prisoners in 1972 Special Category Status was extended to those convicted of politically motivated offences. The strike led by Billy McKee and involving 40 other inmates succeeded in conferring Prisoner of War status to the IRA in the jail: and in effect the British told the world the IRA were an armed politically motivated revolutionary army involved in a war against the continued occupation of a part of Ireland by the British Government, its Army and civil enforcement structures.

It meant the IRA was engaged in a war of national liberation against a force occupying Government.

Hunger Strikes were not new in the arsenal of Irish Republican Resistance.

Although used as a desperate last resort to resolve injustice there are many precedents in Irish History for the use of hunger strike. It was traditional for any person who was wronged by another to sit and fast at the door of those who had wronged them until justice was done.

Lord Mayor of Cork Terence McSwiney's Republican Hunger 
Striker's Coffin Leaving Brixton Prison, London to return home to Ireland.


This special category status was removed on March 1st 1976 when the new prison The Maze was opened adjacent to Long Kesh and the British Government enacted its new prison policy of criminalisation of the Irish Republican Prisoners, the movement outside and its supporters at home and abroad.

All prisoners convicted after 1st March 1976 would be given prison uniforms and treated as criminals, made to carry out prison work and to obey orders given by the prison warders/regime and not their elected officers commanding the IRA volunteers held within the system.

After four years of prison protest, violence from the prison officers, failure by the British to implement the necessary changes to restore Special Category Status as agreed in the document ending the first Hunger Strike in 1980, a new Hunger Strike led by Bobby Sands, the OC of his wing, began on March 1st 1981. Exactly five years to the day Special Status Category was withdrawn by the Her Majesty's Government.

The prisoners would join the Hunger Strike at staged intervals to build momentum, support and pressure for their demands to be met.

The first to go on hunger strike was Bobby Sands IRA Belfast Brigade (convicted of possession of a gun), followed by Francis Hughes IRA South Derry Brigade (killing a British solider), Raymond McCreesh, IRA South Armagh Brigade (possession of a rifle, attempted murder of security forces, IRA membership) and Patsy O Hara INLA Derry (possession of a hand grenade). Patsy was the Leader of the Irish National Liberation Army prisoners.

Francis Hughes Captured in the South Derry Hills
after a gun battle with the undercover British SAS

The prisoners claimed a Hunger Strike was unavoidable due to what they claimed was “British deceit and broken promises”

Francis Hughes, referring to the failure of the British Government to implement the changes agreed to end the first hunger strike, said:

The British know that any solution other than outright victory would be a defeat for them. It was in this frame of mind that they masterminded events leading into the new year, and when they foolishly thought they had won the day through their treachery they asked us for a white flag. Our action alone answers their hypocritical request and as before the message is loud and clear. There is no white flag and there shall be no surrender.

As the hunger strike proceeded and more men joined the death fast, Margaret Thatcher was advised by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland a Minister a member of her own Cabinet to sit tight and do nothing.

Outside the prison the momentum and support for the Hunger Strikers was growing. When a by election was called in the Fermanagh South Tyrone Parliamentary Constituency due to the death of the sitting Independent Member of the British House of Commons, Frank Maguire, an opportunity was presented which afforded the Hunger Strikers, the IRA and its supporters the ability to highlight prisoners demand.

After serious negotiations within the Nationalist community it was agreed by all other parties and individuals interested in contesting the seat that Bobby Sands would be nominated on 30 March 1981 to stand aa a candidate for the vacant Parliamentary seat.

During the first seventeen days of his hunger strike Bobby had already lost sixteen pounds in body weight and was moved to the prison hospital.

Cell 8 at the Maze Hospital Wing where 
Bobby Sands was moved to on March 23 1981

Bobby stood as an Anti-H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner candidate and was opposed by Harry West who stood for the Ulster Unionist Party. On 9 April 1981, Sands won the election with 30,492 votes against 29,046 for West. 

Bobby Sands was elected with more votes by his constituents in Fermanagh South Tyrone than the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher received by voters in her constituency of Finchley.

Supporters Celebrate as Bobby Sands IRA Hunger Striker 
is elected as a Member of the British Parliament on 
9th April 1981 as an Anti H Block/Armagh Political Prisoner



Despite this historic election and the victory for the hunger striking prisoners and their demands to be treated as prisoners of war, tragically Bobby Sands would die twenty six day later on May 5 1981 after 66 days on Hunger strike.

He died as an Irish Republican Felon convicted of militarily opposing the British Occupation of Ireland. An Irish prisoner in a British jail on Irish soil, as the elected Parliamentary representative of the people of Fermanagh South Tyrone at the British Parliament. A member of The House of Commons with a larger vote than the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Amid the fall out and embarrassment of the British Establishment that a Republican Prisoner could be democratically elected by the will of the people to the House of Commons speedy legislation was rushed through Parliament barring prisoners serving 12 months or longer from standing for Parliament.

Owen Carron who was Bobby Sands election agent stood in the new by election caused by the death of Bobby Sands MP and was elected in August 1981 to the same seat with an increased majority and became the youngest MP at the time. In line with most other Irish republicans elected to the British Parliament, he did not take his seat.

Bobby Sands Cortege on route to Milltown Cemetery Belfast.
Over 100 000 attend his funeral

"I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto. But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom” - Bobby Sands

The death of Bobby Sands MP leads to violent confrontations between the British Crown Forces and the Nationalist people.
 
Bobby Sands death on May 5th 1981 was quickly followed by:

  • Francis Hughes 12 May 
  • Raymond McCreesh 21st May 
  • Patsy O Hara 21st May.

With four men dead and many others on the death fast Margaret Thatcher claimed that the hunger strikers “Faced with the failure of their discredited cause, the men of violence have chosen in recent months to play what may well be their last card.”

She was determined not make any concession to the republican inmates on free association within the prison or prison work.

She would also claim the prisoners were committing pre meditated suicide. And that the prison regime was not responsible for their deaths nor would they intervene and force feed the prisoners.

Wanted for Murder Margaret Thatcher 

With a general election in the South of Ireland and council elections in the North, nine protesting prisoners stood for election in Dail Eireann the Irish Parliamentary elections where both Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew were elected, with Joe McDonnell narrowly losing out a third seat and a further twenty five council seats going to socialist republican parties in the north, it became apparent that the 1981 Hunger Strike heralded a new and sustained political support base for republican/socialist politics and candidates.

As the intransigence of Margaret Thatcher and the British Government seemed determined to let every republican hunger striker die, pressure was building on the prisoners and their families by sections of the Catholic Church to end the protest.

With more prisoners joining the fast and several already near death something had to give.

The resolve of the prisoners was unwavering. The determination of the British Government not to compromise had already led to the death of four fasting protesting prisoners. It was left to the families to decide ultimately how the hunger strike would be concluded.

The prisoners entered onto the their fast in the full knowledge that they might and would die if the British Government did not accede to their demands, but when a prisoner enters into a coma during the end stages of the fast where they lost consciousness and the body began to go into complete organ failure the families would become their legal guardians.

A prisoner who joined the fast, who had watched his comrades die before him and knew many more were fasting behind him closed his eyes for the last time slipping in and out of consciousness, a man who had made his peace with God and his farewells to his family was preparing to embrace his death.

The family were then faced with an agonising decision - do they allow the prison authorities to intervene with their permission and save their sons life by administering a life saving drip with nutrients or do they stand aside and let their son die as was his decision before entering the coma?

In the end the fast had to be stopped.

Thatcher seemed determined to let more protesting prisoners die although who knows if many more deaths would have forced her hand?

I cannot imagine the agony faced by the prisoners on the hunger strike.

The pain, the pressure sores, losing their eye sight, emaciated bodies and ultimately having to face a premature death.

80% of the republican prisoners were under 25.

Nor can I imagine the agony of decision faced by the families as their sons died one by one seemingly for nothing as their demands were not met?

In total Ten Men Died on the 1981 Hunger Strike

Ten Men Dead IRA/INLA Hunger Strikers 1981

Died they in Vain?

Within months of the election of Bobby Sands, Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew and the ending of the strike all the demands were met by the prison service and the British Government.

The Great Escape of 1983 here 38 Irish Republican Prisoners took over one wing of the prison, arrested and subdued the prison guards, hijacked a prison food van, rammed the main gate and escaped the prison into the local rural community was a direct result of the sacrifice of the ten men of 81 and the concessions won.

Sinn Fein the Republican Party went onto develop the Ballot box in one hand and the Armalite in the other. The twin military and political election strategy eventually may have led to Sinn Fein becoming the second biggest Represented Party in the North with Martin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister and a Major Political Force in the South and could have contributed to the 1994 IRA Ceasefire, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Perhaps the contribution of the prisoners, the hunger strike, their deaths and the subsequent rise of Sinn Fein politically may never be fully understood or appreciated?

Would those who died on the Hunger Strike, their families, comrades and those who marched for the Demand for Political Status agree with the way the peace process has evolved?

Would they agree that armed resistance to foreign occupation should be abandoned in the interests of an internal settlement in the north with the Irish Constitution forgoing its territorial claim to the integrity and Sovereignty of the whole island?

With a triple locked Unionist veto on Irish reunification and a regime at Stormont that is permanently in government, were sectarianism is still beating at the very heart of the administration?

Well only they will know the answer !

Bobby Sands IRA, MP Poet Writer Philosopher.

The Rhythm Of Time

by Bobby Sands.

There’s an inner thing in every man,
Do you know this thing my friend?
It has withstood the blows of a million years,
And will do so to the end.

It was born when time did not exist,
And it grew up out of life,
It cut down evil’s strangling vines,
Like a slashing searing knife.

It lit fires when fires were not,
And burnt the mind of man,
Tempering leadened hearts to steel,
From the time that time began.

It wept by the waters of Babylon,
And when all men were a loss,
It screeched in writhing agony,
And it hung bleeding from the Cross.

It died in Rome by lion and sword,
And in defiant cruel array,
When the deathly word was ‘Spartacus’
Along the Appian Way.

It marched with Wat the Tyler’s poor,
And frightened lord and king,
And it was emblazoned in their deathly stare,
As e’er a living thing.

It smiled in holy innocence,
Before conquistadors of old,
So meek and tame and unaware,
Of the deathly power of gold.

It burst forth through pitiful Paris streets,
And stormed the old Bastille,
And marched upon the serpent’s head,
And crushed it ‘neath its heel.

It died in blood on Buffalo Plains,
And starved by moons of rain,
Its heart was buried in Wounded Knee,
But it will come to rise again.

It screamed aloud by Kerry lakes,
As it was knelt upon the ground,
And it died in great defiance,
As they coldly shot it down.

It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space
It has risen in red and black and white,
It is there in every race.

It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
It screams in tyrants’ eyes,
It has reached the peak of mountains high,
It comes searing ‘cross the skies.

It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,
That thought that says ‘I’m right!’ 

Fra Hughes is a Freelance journalist-author-commentator-political activist.
Follow on Twitter @electfrahughes


Bobby Sands and the 1981 Hunger Strike 40th Anniversary

Des Dalton ✒ On the death of US President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, the US Secretary of War Edwin Stanton is reputed to have uttered the words “Now he belongs to the ages.” 

The same words could equally apply to Bobby Sands. He is not the property of any sectional or party interest but belongs to the Irish people. Like Spartan warriors, Sands and his comrades set their faces against any compromise with a regime determined to rob them of their identity. 

All the brutality that the British State could muster was thrown at the blanket men and women of the H Blocks and Armagh Jail. But out of that maelstrom of human suffering, it was their common humanity that ultimately triumphed. The world witnessed their suffering and recognised in it the common cause of the downtrodden everywhere.

Considering all of this, the release of the previously unpublished comm from Bobby Sands, setting out his final wishes regarding his funeral and burial, was a very appropriate way to mark the 40th anniversary of his death. Bobby was given his voice again, his words, unadorned, were allowed to speak for themselves. Those words speak of a final injustice visited on Sands by those in whom he placed his faith and trust. The denial of his final wishes as to where he would be buried and the manner in which his body would be clothed, if true, bring nothing but shame to those who are responsible.

Bobby Sands gave his life willingly for an idea. He was no automaton or pawn in a greater game. Bobby Sands died to assert just the opposite. His death was an affirmation of his innate dignity and autonomy as a human being. It would be a tragic irony if the very autonomy and agency that the British could not take from him during the four hellish years of the H Blocks was denied him in death by those he trusted as comrades and friends.

The 26-County Fine Gael/Labour Coalition of 1973-77 were rightly pilloried at home and abroad for their hijacking of the body of hunger striker Frank Stagg in 1976. If the recently released comm were Bobby’s final wishes then those who wilfully ignored them are no better than Liam Cosgrave and his infamous Justice Minister, Paddy Cooney, when they ordered concrete to be poured over the grave of Frank Stagg, to prevent his body being placed alongside that of his comrade Michael Gaughan, which had been his final wish.

I would echo Anthony McIntyre’s sentiment that if there is a later comm in which Bobby declares a complete change of mind regarding his burial place, including his attitude to Milltown, then let it be placed on the public and historical record.

In a tribute to Bobby Sands, penned only days after his death, the then President of Sinn Féin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh wrote: “His martyrdom was bravely undertaken, heroically endured, and has now been consummated.” Surely the least we owe Bobby Sands and his comrades 40 years on, is to ensure their voices are heard and the full truth of those dark and evil days of 1981 is told for this and future generations.

⏭Des Dalton is a long time republican activist.

Truth Is The Debt Owed To Bobby Sands

Dixie Elliot ✒ writes of his disappointment towards those opposed to the publication of a comm from Bobby Sands on the 40th anniversary of his death. 

I have been made aware of the hypocrites on the Blanketmen and Women forum who were making comments about the timing of the Bobby Sands comm on the morning of the 40th anniversary of his death.
 
May I remind those hypocrites that on the very day of the 40th anniversary of Bobby's famous election victory, Mary Lou McDonald, Michelle O'Neill and worst of all, the President of the Stormont Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, Alex Maskey, were sending condolences to the repugnant British Royals on the death of a racist and that they later apologised for the actions of the IRA.
 
Apologising to the British Queen who is Head of the Armed Forces and Prince Charles who is Colonel-in-Chief of the murderous Paras.
 
The family who recently gave 'Royal Assent' to the 'Overseas Operations Bill'.
 
Did the hypocrites utter a word of condemnation? Not a chance in hell.

Forty years have passed since 10 brave men were dying on hunger strike in the H Blocks, known to the British as HMP Maze. - Her Majesty's Prison - and these hypocrites have the absolute gall to criticise the fact that Bobby's words dominated the air waves, drowning out those in Sinn Féin whose lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause they had betrayed - to paraphrase James Connolly.

Bobby's words from beyond the grave damns them for what they have become.

May I also remind them that:

  • Michelle O'Neill and Declan Kearney stood at the side of the Colonel-in-Chief of the Paras the day after the Bloody Sunday Families were told that no charges would be brought against his murderous regiment.
  • That John Finucane was there greet him when he appeared in the north during the Ballymurphy Inquiry. 

Both visits were acts of British arrogance yet Sinn Féin choose to play along with it.

These hypocrites ignore the fact that Sinn Féin has chosen to stand with these people who still claim domination over the north of our country, something many brave men and women died fighting against. 

They ignore it in order to retain their jobs which are merely the crumbs dropping from the tables of their leadership.

They should be wondering when it will be their turn to be shafted.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

May I Remind Them

Alex McCrory ✒ reflecting on the 40th anniversary of Bobby Sands. 

I have posted this story before, however, on Bobby's anniversary I am immediately transported back in time.

I had a visit on that Friday afternoon with my family. All week we had been receiving reports of Bobby's impending death. Sadly, despite our best efforts, we had failed to save our comrade from the inevitable outcome of his long hunger strike. We knew he would not step back from the brink, even when faced with his own extinction. Bobby valued some things more than life itself. We were looking over the precipice and into the abyss.

On the visit my mother signaled that she had smuggled something in, which lifted my spirits. I expected a large cigar shaped package of tobacco wrapped in layers of clingfilm, that I would put up my backside at the first opportunity. This was not an easy task as in those days each individual prisoner had a screw escort that stood only feet away watching his every move. But human nature being what it is, some screws simply became bored or embarrassed by their intrusive behaviour. All that was needed was a momentary lapse of concentration to do the business. A package could be handed over and secreted away in seconds on a good day. But this was not a good day.

The screw did not take his eyes of me for a minute. Every job has a jobsworth; a guy who goes beyond the call of duty. I began to panic as the clock ran down on the half-hour visiting time. With some urgency, I told my mother to pass me the package whenever the visit ended. Because prisoners went on visits in batches meant that several would all finish together creating a lot of activity and movement; kissing, hugging and handshakes. That was my last chance, and I was determined to succeed come what may.

Tobacco was important for the morale of smokers, and for general morale. When smokers were in good form then it benefited the non-smokers as well. Like any addict, a smoker is hard to stick when deprived of the chemical reactions of the drug. Therefore, to get tobacco back onto the wing was a test of character and resolve. Those that failed were not viewed in the best of light.

But even more important than tobacco were the comms dealing with important matters to do with the hunger strike. Lines of communication had been developed so that it was possible to send out a comm in the morning and receive a reply in the afternoon. Although there were handpicked couriers for the most sensitive comms, in theory, any family could be asked to smuggle one in. It was so nerve wrecking that many families refused to do it because they feared the consequences. However, my mother was prominent in the National H-Block campaign, therefore, I carried many comms in and out of the prison. They were secreted in my mouth and foreskin, and on occasion in my back passage. Necessity is the mother of all invention.

When the visit was called to a halt, my mother passed the package across the table. It was done quick so the screw did not see it happen, or so I thought. I held it in my clenched fist and, as she hugged me, I slid it up my arse on the screw's blind side. I kissed my her said my goodbyes. As I walked out of the visiting room, I felt relieved it was all over. I looked forward to a H-Block roll-up over the lunch break, as well as treating my comrades to the same. But, at that moment, disaster struck. My escort asked to speak to the PO (Principal Officer), and I knew my goose was cooked.

The screw said he suspected I had contraband on my person. I made no reply. Instead of going back to the wing, I was sent to the boards (the punishment block). There I was taken into a cell and forced to squat naked over a mirror. One screw put on plastic gloves and spread my bum cheeks apart. This was not unusual. I had learned to block out my emotions whenever I was being violated. My private parts were not so private anymore.

I was kept on the boards until Tuesday morning. Around 7.30am the orderly came to the cell door and whispered that Bobby Sands had died in the early hours. I sat down on the mattress despondent. When the breakfast came, I could not look at it. All I wanted was to be returned to the wing to be with the rest of the lads. I needed to be with my comrades at that moment in time. Around 11.30am the van arrived to bring me back to H-4. I was never more grateful.

Bobby's death shocked us all. As we struggled to come to terms with its emotional impact, some of the screws joked and laughed about it. The bastards could not fathom why a young man had sacrificed his life for political beliefs. They never did understand what made us tick. We were worlds apart, the oppressor and the oppressed.

Alec McCrory 
is a former blanketman.

The Terrible Whisper That Bobby Sands Had Died

Gerard Hodgins ✒ Letter in today's Irish News in response to the Bobby Sands comm expressing a desire not to be buried in Milltown or wrapped in a shroud.

The revelation that before his death Bobby Sands specifically requested not to be buried in Milltown Cemetery, only to be buried there by Gerry Adams and his kitchen cabinet is appalling but not shocking. 

For 40 years Bobby Sands has been commodified by Sinn Féin, used to bring in funds for the party alone. 

Could I request for Sinn Féin to do the decent thing, even at this late stage, and use some of those funds to honour Bobby Sands’s last wish and have the man reinterred where he wanted to be.  

⏩ Gerard Hodgins is a former blanketman and H-Blocks hunger striker.

Time For Sinn Féin To Do The Decent Thing

Tommy Mellon ✒ with some thoughts on the Bobby Sands comm expressing a wish not to be buried in Milltown or in a shroud. 

Unlike different claims in the past that cannot be verified, this claim can easily be put to rest by producing the actual unredacted comm.

Pat Finucane is no longer alive so cannot tell what he knows - the only actual proof is the comm.

My first thought when reading the typed copy of the comm and hearing the SF response was why the sudden change of mind?

The man by all accounts was meticulous and there is more than ample evidence of this from his writings and other comms and conversations with other blanket men.

He thought everything through to allow for all eventualities. Like a lot of people, he believed in the republican leadership and that they would honor his last wishes. It looks like that belief was betrayed and his funeral was used as a huge propaganda tool.

I do not know if Adams and his kitchen cabinet would have had the electoral ambitions then at the time of Bobby’s death as they did in later years. But if they went against his wishes for electoral benefit, to me, it is near the top of all the other things that they have done since.

Maybe Bobby did change his mind, but as pointed out he spoke and wrote of Ballina often and his wish to be buried there even after March 9th.

Again, he was meticulous in his planning. Why the change of heart between February and March 9th on the site of his burial?

Why is the topic of being buried in a blanket and not a shroud or suit never discussed again?

As for the Morrison statement that the others apart from Kevin Lynch were buried in republican plots with republican funerals, they could have buried Bobby Sands in the middle of a field in the Mourne mountains and it automatically becomes a republican grave.

They have no right or justification to keep the contents of the comm a secret anymore. The least they could do is have the comm examined to verify its authenticity and its contents.

It's insulting to his family not to know the truth.

If Michelle O’Neill thinks its crass for a family to know the truth about their loved ones last wishes then she is crass and does not understand the definition of crass which is lacking sensitivity, refinement, or intelligence.

The Sands family deserve the truth - release the comm and give them peace of mind.

⏩Tommy Mellon is from a family with a long history of Republican and GAA involvement in Derry.

Comms Should No Longer Be Secret

Richard O'Rawe ✒ sheds light on the vetting of H-Block comms.

As as general rule I don't comment on social media or get involved in the discussion that takes place online. But for the purposes of clarity I think I should on this occasion.

In 1985, I, along with two other volunteers, vetted all the comms from the H-Blocks before they were given over to David Beresford, who was researching his book, Ten Men Dead at the time.

Our task was to make remove all comms which mentioned The Mountain Climber, the intermediary between the British government and the IRA kitchen-cabinet. As we now know, one comm slipped through the net.

The recently uncovered 25 February 1981 comm from Bobby, in regards to his burial arrangements, did not come to our attention while vetting the comms.

In relation to the 9 March 1981 comm that Danny Morrison has produced for the media, at no time did I, or my fellow-volunteers, redact any comms. Redaction was not the purpose of the process in which we were engaged. So, if there is a redaction in the Morrison comm, someone other than we deemed it necessary to censor the comm and, in doing so, conceal the facts behind the redacted section from Beresford's future readership. 

It is not for me to speculate who might have been behind the redaction. But if everything is above board, if Bobby genuinely did change his mind in regards to his funeral arrangements, why hide it? And why was all this hidden from the Sands family for the guts of forty years? Maybe someone thought them unworthy of knowing how their son and brother wanted to be buried.

⏩ Richard O'Rawe was the H-Blocks PRO during the 1981 Hunger Strike. His books, Blanketmen and Afterlives are inside accounts of the blanket protest and subsequent hunger strikes. 

Vetting Comms From The H-Blocks


Carrie Twomey examines what is known about Bobby Sands's burial wishes.

Bobby Sands had very strong views on his death and how he wanted to be buried, which he expressed repeatedly, in comms and in his writing. 

His preference was to be buried in his blanket in Ballina alongside hunger strikers Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg. He did not want to be buried in Milltown, and he did not want to be buried in a suit or a shroud. He would have preferred to be buried in Carnmoney Cemetery as that was near his childhood home, but the conflict made that untenable. He also considered being buried in Louth so his sister, who was on the run, could attend his funeral without risk. But his heart was set on being buried in Ballina. 

His family, who lived in Belfast, were unaware of his wishes prior to his death, and were not privy to the comms he sent the republican leadership from prison. He was in the process of separating from his wife, who lived in England, and had engaged a solicitor for that reason. 

In early February, 1981, in a lengthy comm detailing his background for press purposes, the first known expression of where he wanted buried, and why, is made:

"Because of her (and I’m not trying to be smart or stupid or mimic anyone) I wanted buried down there [the Republic]."

This comm was published in 1987 in David Beresford’s Ten Men Dead. Two weeks later, on February 15 1981, he mentioned in a comm that he had instructed his lawyer, Pat Finucane, of his wish to be buried in Ballina in Co Mayo alongside republican hunger strikers Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg. 

"Sent you a message with Signer [his solicitor] the other night, i.e., Ballina. No one else knows about this and it is a genuine, personal wish. I’ll be getting Signer to write it down so as it will be adhered to by my family."

He may have been anticipating his family coming under pressure. 

The February 15 comm has never been reproduced in full. The Bobby Sands Trust, through Danny Morrison to the Irish News on the 40th anniversary of Bobby's death, publicly released the portion of the February 15 comm quoted above referring to the signer. 

This comm was referred to in Dennis O'Hearn's 2006 biography of Bobby Sands, Nothing but an Unfinished Song:
    
"Sands had thought a lot about where he would be buried and at one point he asked his lawyer to draw up a legal document backing up his request to be buried in County Mayo, next to Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg, who died on hunger strike in English jails. Sands insisted that he was being neither "naive" nor "morbidly flamboyant" but that he had serious personal reasons for the request. Earlier, he requested to be buried in Carnmoney Cemetery, just a few hundred yards from his boyhood home."

Bobby was obviously then asked by the republican leadership why he had put his burial wishes with his solicitor. On the 25th of February he says, 

"I got your wee note the other day in regard to what I was doing with signer [lawyer]. Firstly I wouldn't tell you to mind your own business because to a large extent it is as much your business as anyone else's."  

He was concerned about how his family felt. He feared what would happen after he died. He elaborates, again, apparently, on why he wanted buried in Ballina:
   
"You see comrade we have (all of us) our little human fears and wishes and so on, to be honest I don't like Milltown, what the difference at that stage. We always wanted buried in Carnmoney the Catholic part of which lies under the shade of the west side of Carnmoney hill. I wrote a poem about this once, you should have it there, my reasons are many, as you know I grew up out there, even I realize that this during a war could never for obvious reasons, so there is also the consideration of my sister who I haven't seen for four years and whom I won't see again."

The poem he refers to is called A Place to Rest. The last stanza reads:
    
I would gladly rest where the whin bush grow, 
Beneath the rocks where the linnets sing 
In Carnmoney Graveyard ‘neath its hill 
Fearing not what the day may bring!

The comm continues,
    
"That is why I wanted to go to Ballina and there are other reasons none of which pertain to the political hazzle involved. I even considered [Fochuairt], which lies on the Free State side of the South Armagh border. 
"I don't like Milltown and that's being honest you're probably wrecked calling me a morbid eccentric, I'm not I'm human and worry on wee things like those and finally I wanted wrapped in a blanket cause I don't want humiliated in a stinkin' suit or shroud and I've said enough."

Bobby wrote a short story called Bury Me In My Blanket, which concludes:
 
"Spirit of resistance!" he sniggered. "Ideals", he mimicked. "We'll see bloody well all about that if you have to bloody well die here," he said.
"I've thought about that too," I said, "and its hard to say to oneself that one is prepared to go to such an extreme, but then we are special prisoners and we are struggling for a special cause, so if I should die here, tell "Mr Mason" to bury me in my blanket and for God's sake keep your head at peace and you have yours examined like a good lad."

The self-conscious repetition of his concern at being thought "morbidly flamboyant" or "a morbid eccentric", "naive" in the two February comms is striking. The comms he was responding to would be illuminating. 

Both Beresford’s and O'Hearn's books contain a comm from Bobby dated March 9. This comm is relevant for what is not included in its published form. The two versions of the comm are the same, and contain an ellipsis in the same place:
   
To Liam Og from Marcella 9.3.81 
Comrade, Just some worrying thoughts that are in my mind. As you should know, I don't care much to entering any discussion on the topic of 'negotiations' or for that matter 'settlements' but what is worrying me is this: I'm afraid that there is a possibility that at a crucial stage (which could be after death) the Brits would move with a settlement and demand Index [Prison Chaplin, Fr Toner) as guarantor. Now this is feasible, if a man is dying, that they would try to force Bik to accept a settlement to save life which of course would be subject to Index's interpretation. And we know how far that would get us. It wouldn't make any difference if it were he and Silvertop [Assistant Prison Chaplain, Fr Murphy), the same would occur. I've told Bik to let me or anyone else die before submitting to a play like that. Well that's what was bugging me - silly old fool aren't I!!  . . . I was wondering (here it comes says you) that out of the goodness of all yer hearts you could get me one miserly book and try to leave it in: the Poems of Ethna Carberry - cissy. 'That's really all I want, last request as they say. Some ask for cigarettes, others for blindfolds, yer man asks for Poetry.

In response to the revelations of Bobby's burial wishes with the publication of the February 25th comm, Sinn Féin claimed Bobby Sands had changed his mind in a subsequent comm. The Bobby Sands Trust released an heretofore unseen excerpt of the previously published March 9 comm:

"If I don’t get seeing the Signer you should tell him of my change of heart on the Ballina thing, or should I say, change of mind . . . "

This new excerpt manifestly slots into where the ellipsis was misused in the previous publications. Because an ellipsis had been duplicitously deployed in the original publication of this comm, the appearance of one in this new excerpt begs the question what else has been held back? Is there more to this comm that has not been released? Why was that section of the comm held back for 40 years? 

Rather than settling the issue, this limited release raises further questions. Danny Morrison, who provided the selected excerpts of Bobby Sands' comms held by the Bobby Sands Trust, says there are no further references to being buried in Ballina in subsequent comms. But we know from his diary that his heart was still with his comrades in Mayo, for on the 12th of March he wrote:
   
I have come to understand, and with each passing day I understand increasingly more and in the most sad way, that awful fate and torture endured to the very bitter end by Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan. Perhaps, -- indeed yes! -- I am more fortunate because those poor comrades were without comrades or a friendly face. They had not even the final consolation of dying in their own land. Irishmen alone and at the unmerciful ugly hands of a vindictive heartless enemy. Dear God, but I am so lucky in comparison.

Bobby Sands may have changed his mind about his wish to be buried in Ballina. But did he want to be buried in Milltown?  

"The assumption would be that Belfast republicans were buried in Milltown cemetery," Danny Morrison told the Irish News by way of explanation for how Bobby Sands ended up buried in a shroud in Milltown Cemetery.

Whose assumption? Why assume anything at all? Bobby was clear he didn't like Milltown. Was there a subsequent communication that he changed his mind about that? He was adamant he didn't want humiliated in a shroud or suit. Yet he was not buried in his blanket as he desired. 

It is unsettling that 40 years after the hunger strikes, despite the iconography of Bobby Sands being all pervasive and the Sinn Féin operated Bobby Sands Trust churning out publication after publication, the full, unredacted, uncensored comms of this massively important part of our history have not been released, and are being doled out piecemeal in order to shore up a crumbling narrative. 

That this is being done against a backdrop of calls for a Truth and Reconciliation commission to deal with legacy issues only adds insult to injury. 

The Bobby Sands Trust should release all of Bobby's comms in full to the public, including comms written to him. The release can only add to society's understanding of its history.  What are they waiting on? Why continue to suppress his words? 

"All the other republicans who died on hunger strike were buried in republican plots. Kevin Lynch was in the family plot but it is a republican grave. They were all buried with republican ceremonies, military funerals, and they went to republican plots," Danny Morrison told the Irish News.

The assumption. Against the expressed wishes. Is Ballina not a republican plot? Milltown definitely appears to be, albeit of a different sort. 

Bobby Sands And The Republican Plot

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