Bobby Sands facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Bobby Sands
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| Roibeárd Ó Seachnasaigh | |
Sands in Long Kesh, 1973 (aged 18–19)
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| Member of Parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone |
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| In office 9 April 1981 – 5 May 1981 |
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| Preceded by | Frank Maguire |
| Succeeded by | Owen Carron |
| Majority | 1,447 (2.4%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 9 March 1954 Dunmurry, County Antrim, Northern Ireland |
| Died | 5 May 1981 (aged 27) HM Prison Maze, County Down, Northern Ireland |
| Cause of death | Starvation |
| Political party | Anti H-Block |
| Spouse |
Geraldine Noade
(m. 1973) |
| Children | 1 |
| Relatives | Bernadette Sands McKevitt (sister) |
| Website | Bobby Sands Trust |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Provisional Irish Republican Army |
| Years of service | 1972–1981 |
| Unit | First Battalion South West Belfast, Belfast Brigade |
| Battles/wars | The Troubles |
Robert Gerard Sands (Irish: Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh; 9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981) was a member (and leader in the Maze prison) of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland. Sands helped to plan the 1976 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing in Dunmurry, which was followed by a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Sands was arrested while trying to escape and sentenced to 14 years for firearms possession.
He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish republican prisoners protested against the removal of Special Category Status. During Sands' strike, he was elected to the British Parliament as an Anti H-Block candidate. His death and those of nine other hunger strikers was followed by a new surge of IRA recruitment and activity. International media coverage brought attention to the hunger strikers, and the republican movement in general, attracting both praise and criticism.
Contents
Early life
Sands was born in Dunmurry in 1954 to John and Rosaleen Sands. After marrying, they relocated to the new development of Abbots Cross, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, outside North Belfast. Sands was the eldest of four children. His younger sisters, Marcella and Bernadette, were born in 1955 and 1958, respectively. He also had a younger brother, John, born in 1962.
In 1961, after experiencing harassment and intimidation from their neighbours, the family abandoned the development and moved in with friends for six months before being granted housing in the nearby Rathcoole development. Rathcoole was 30% Catholic and featured Catholic schools as well as a nominally Catholic, but religiously mixed, youth football club, an unusual circumstance in Northern Ireland, known as Stella Maris, the same as the school Sands attended and where the training was held. Sands was a member of this club and played left-back. There was another youth club in nearby Greencastle called Star of the Sea and many boys went there when the Stella Maris club closed.
By 1966, sectarian violence in Rathcoole, along with the rest of the Belfast metropolitan area, had considerably worsened, and the minority Catholic population there found itself under siege. Despite always having had Protestant friends, Sands suddenly found that none of them would even speak to him, and he quickly learned to associate only with Catholics.
He left school in 1969 at age 15, and enrolled in Newtownabbey Technical College, beginning an apprenticeship as a coach builder at Alexander's Coach Works in 1970. He worked there for less than a year, enduring constant harassment from his Protestant co-workers, which according to several co-workers he ignored completely, as he wished to learn a meaningful trade. He was eventually confronted after leaving his shift in January 1971 by a number of his coworkers wearing the armbands of the local Ulster loyalist tartan gang. He was held at gunpoint and told that Alexander's was off-limits to "Fenian scum" and to never come back if he valued his life. He later said that this event was the point at which he decided that militancy was the only solution. In late 1971 while working as a barman at the Glen Inn (a pub in Glengormley), Sands approached a man who he knew to be connected to the IRA and told him he would like to join; the man told Bobby to think it over as things in Rathcoole were bad and Catholics in the area were very isolated. Later that year, the same man from the pub spotted Bobby playing football on a pitch near the Sands house. As an initiation, he asked Sands to transport a gun from Rathcoole to Glengormley because the local IRA volunteer who was supposed to do the job had failed to show up. Bobby left the game on the spot, changed clothes and took the gun. This is when Bobby's involvement with the IRA began in earnest, according to O'Hearn:
Sands soon recruited some of his mates into a small auxiliary unit of about six or seven volunteers. Bobby was their section leader. They were isolated, so they worked with other volunteers from surrounding areas.
In June 1972, Sands's parents' home was attacked and damaged by a loyalist mob and they were again forced to move, this time to the West Belfast Catholic area of Twinbrook, where Sands, now thoroughly embittered, rejoined them. By 1973, almost every Catholic family had been driven out of Rathcoole by violence and intimidation, although there were some who remained.
Provisional IRA activity
Sands was arrested and charged in October 1972 with possession of four handguns found in the house where he was staying. He was convicted in April 1973, sentenced to five years imprisonment, and released in April 1976.
Upon his release, he returned to his family home in West Belfast, and resumed his active role in the Provisional IRA. Sands and Joe McDonnell planned the bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry on 14 October 1976. The showroom was destroyed but as the IRA men left the scene there was a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Leaving behind two wounded, Seamus Martin and Gabriel Corbett, the remaining four (Sands, McDonnell, Seamus Finucane, and Sean Lavery) tried to escape by car, but were arrested. One of the revolvers used in the attack was found in the car. On 7 September 1977, the four men were sentenced to 14 years for possession of the revolver. They were not charged with explosive offences.
Immediately after his sentencing, Sands was implicated in a fight and sent to the punishment block in Crumlin Road Prison. The cells contained a bed, a mattress, a chamber pot and a water container. Books, radios and other personal items were not permitted, although a Bible and some Catholic pamphlets were provided.
Maze Prison years
In late 1980, Sands was chosen Officer Commanding of the Provisional IRA prisoners in the Maze Prison, succeeding Brendan Hughes, who was participating in the first hunger strike. Republican prisoners organised a series of protests seeking to regain their previous Special Category Status, which would free them from some ordinary prison regulations. This began with the "blanket protest" in 1976, in which the prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms and wore blankets instead.
Published works
While in prison, Sands had several letters and articles published in the Republican paper An Phoblacht under the pseudonym "Marcella" (his sister's name). Other writings attributed to him are: Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song (1989) and One Day in My Life (1983). Sands also wrote the lyrics of "Back Home in Derry" and "McIlhatton", which were both later recorded by Christy Moore, and "Sad Song for Susan", which was also later recorded. The melody of "Back Home in Derry" was borrowed from Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". The song itself is about the penal transportation of Irishmen in the 19th century to Van Diemen's Land (modern day Tasmania, Australia).
Hunger strike
The 1981 Irish hunger strike started with Sands refusing food on 1 March 1981. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals to maximise publicity, with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months. The hunger strike centred on five demands:
- the right not to wear a prison uniform;
- the right not to do prison work;
- the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
- the right to one visit, one letter, and one parcel per week;
- full restoration of remission lost through the protest.
The significance of the hunger strike was the prisoners' aim of being considered political prisoners as opposed to criminals. Shortly before Sands's death, The Washington Post reported that the primary aim of the hunger strike was to generate international publicity.
Member of Parliament
Shortly after the beginning of the strike, Frank Maguire, the Independent Republican Member of Parliament (MP) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, died suddenly of a heart attack, precipitating the April 1981 by-election. The sudden vacancy in a seat with a nationalist majority of about 5,000 was a valuable opportunity for Sands's supporters "to raise public consciousness". Pressure not to split the vote led other nationalist parties, notably the Social Democratic and Labour Party, to withdraw, and Sands was nominated on the label "Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner". After a highly polarised campaign, Sands narrowly won the seat on 9 April 1981, with 30,493 votes to 29,046 for the Ulster Unionist Party candidate Harry West. Sands became the youngest MP at the time. Sands died in prison less than a month later, without ever having taken his seat in the Commons.
Following Sands's election win, the British government introduced the Representation of the People Act 1981 which prevents prisoners serving jail terms of more than one year in either the UK or the Republic of Ireland from being nominated as candidates in British elections. The enactment of the law, as a response to the election of Sands, consequently prevented other hunger strikers from being elected to the House of Commons.
Death
Sands died on 5 May 1981 in the Maze's prison hospital after 66 days on hunger strike, aged 27. The original pathologist's report recorded the hunger strikers' causes of death as "self-imposed starvation", amended to simply "starvation" following protests by the dead strikers' families. The coroner recorded verdicts of "starvation, self-imposed".
Sands became a martyr to Irish republicans, and the announcement of his death prompted several days of rioting in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. More than 100,000 people lined the route of Sands's funeral, and he was buried in the 'New Republican Plot' alongside 76 others. Their graves are maintained by the National Graves Association, Belfast.
Political impact
Nine other IRA and Irish National Liberation Army members who were involved in the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike died after Sands. On the day of Sands's funeral, Unionist leader Ian Paisley held a memorial service outside Belfast City Hall to commemorate the victims of the IRA. In the Irish general election held the same year, two anti H-block candidates won seats on an abstentionist basis.
The death of Sands resulted in a new surge of IRA activity and an immediate escalation in the Troubles, with the group obtaining many more members and increasing its fund-raising capability. Both nationalists and unionists began to harden their attitudes and move towards political extremes. Sands's Westminster seat was taken by his election agent, Owen Carron, standing as 'Anti H-Block Proxy Political Prisoner' with an increased majority. Shortly after Sands's death, the Representation of the People Act 1981 was passed through parliament. As a result of the Act, other prisoners on hunger strike were unable to stand in the second 1981 by-election in Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
Popular culture
The Grateful Dead played the Nassau Coliseum the following night after Sands died and guitarist Bob Weir dedicated the song "He's Gone" to Sands. The concert was later released as Dick's Picks Volume 13, part of the Grateful Dead's programme of live concert releases.
Songs written in response to the hunger strikes and Sands's death include songs by Easterhouse, Black 47, Nicky Wire, Meic Stevens, The Undertones, Eric Bogle, Soldat Louis and Christy Moore. Moore's song, "The People's Own MP", has been described as an example of a rebel song of the "hero-martyr" genre in which Sands's "intellectual, artistic and moral qualities" are eulogised. The U.S. rock band Rage Against the Machine listed Sands as an inspiration in the sleeve notes of their self-titled debut album and as a "political hero" in media interviews.
Celtic F.C., a Scottish football club, received a €50,000 fine from UEFA over banners depicting Sands with a political message, which were displayed during a game on 26 November 2013 by Green Brigade fans.
Bobby Sands has been portrayed in the following films:
- Sands was played by John Lynch in the 1996 film Some Mother's Son. It was directed by Terry George and written by George and Jim Sheridan.
- Sands was played by Mark O'Halloran in the 2001 film H3.
- Michael Fassbender played Sands in Hunger, a 2008 film by Steve McQueen about the last six weeks of Sands's life in the context of the 1981 Irish hunger strike. It premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and won McQueen the prestigious Caméra d'Or award for first-time filmmakers. It was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK for the first time on 15 December 2009.
- The 2016 documentary film Bobby Sands: 66 Days.
Family
Sands married Geraldine Noade while in prison on robbery charges on 3 March 1973. His son, Gerard, was born 8 May 1973. Noade soon left with Gerard to live in England.
Sands's sister, Bernadette Sands McKevitt, is also a prominent Irish republican. She was a founding member of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement in 1997. She opposed the Good Friday Agreement, stating that "Bobby did not die for cross-border bodies with executive powers. He did not die for nationalists to be equal British citizens within the Northern Ireland state."
His granddaughter, Erin, played for the County Down team which won the All-Ireland Junior Ladies' Football Championship in 2023.
See also
- List of United Kingdom MPs with the shortest service
- Terence MacSwiney – Lord Mayor of Cork in 1920 who died in Brixton Prison after a hunger strike lasting 74 days.
Images for kids
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A memorial mural to Sands along Falls Road, Belfast
