Bobby Sands: 66 Days (2016) - full transcript

The conflicts in Northern Ireland
seemed to be just going on and on

in a relentless cycle of violence,
and then suddenly, in 1981,

it took the strangest, darkest,
most dramatic twist

when Bobby Sands
and nine of his young comrades,

insisting they be recognised as
political prisoners,

went on hunger strike.

This was drama
at the absolute rawest edge

that it could possibly be.

Because for everybody, it was like
there was this clock ticking

in people's heads. There was
a sense this wasn't a game.

I think it was a very, very
difficult process for most people,



and if Bobby Sands did nothing else,

he broke through
the mental partition.

I mean, it meant that everybody had
to pay attention to it

and I don't think there's anybody
on the islands,

from whatever perspective,
who lived through that time,

who is not in some way
marked by it personally.

We interrupt our regular programme
schedule to bring you

the following special report
from ABC News Washington.

Here is Ted Koppel.

Bobby Sands is dead.

The 27-year-old member
of the Irish Republican Army,

who went on a protest hunger strike
66 days ago, has died.

Sands, who was serving a 14-year
prison term on a weapons possession

charge, had been demanding special
status as a political prisoner.



A number of other
Irish Republican Army members

also imprisoned by the British

had joined Sands in his protest,
and several of them

are also well into a hunger strike.

What he did and what he is known for

is the most individual thing
anybody could possibly do.

What more personal thing
could you do than use your own body

in the way that he did?

This is about
the most intimate kind of pain,

and yet, very quickly,
that intimacy, that personality,

that sense of one's self is taken
away and is turned into a slogan -

a brand.

A perfect icon needs to be

poised somewhere between knowledge
and vast ignorance.

And what we get with Sands, is we
get enough knowledge that we can

identify with him as a person,
but also, you know, he's so young,

there's so little, really, of
his life,

that you could fill in all those
blanks in any way that you want.

But that's just the way
mythology works.

I'm standing on the threshold of
another trembling world.

May God have mercy on my soul.

The march through West Belfast
was the first major test of

public support for this second
Republican hunger strike, which has

started against a background
far more bitter than the first.

So far, only one prisoner,
Bobby Sands, has refused food.

Chosen, apparently, because Sands is
felt to be a particularly hard man,

ready to face death alone.

My heart is very sore because I know
I've broken my poor mother's heart,

and my home is struck with
unbearable anxiety.

But I've 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.

The Star of the Sea football club

was several miles from
where I was living in Rathcoole.

We had no proper football team
in Rathcoole

for the size of the estate,

which at that time was supposed to
be the biggest in Europe.

But there was no organised
football team for the kids.

To us, it wasn't a Catholic football
club, it wasn't a Protestant -

it was a football club,
and they looked after one another.

We played at Celtic Park in
a cup final and we beat them five.

But when the whistle went, it was
like a free-for-all on the pitch.

And I remember Sandsy
with his boot off,

hitting somebody over the head
with his boot, you know?

The Star of the Sea was something
which was genuinely cross community.

You didn't know it was cross
community, you didn't even think it.

Obviously, it had to come apart. It
couldn't have survived in the '70s.

Just wasn't going to happen.

Gradually, the Protestant guys
sort of drifted away.

People were being drawn back into
their two communities at that stage,

over those years.

DISTANT LAUGHTER

We had great days, so we had.

The Troubles then really started
happening in Rathcoole.

Catholic families were being
driven out of their homes.

At times, I tried to stick up
for families,

because some of those families were
good friends of mine, their sons.

And then we seen Bobby Sands
forced to leave Rathcoole.

I've received several notes
from my family and friends.

I have only read
the one from my mother.

It was what I needed. She has
regained her fighting spirit.

I am happy now.

From my earliest years,
I recall my mother speaking of

the troubled times that occurred
during her childhood.

Often she spoke of internment on
ships, of gun attacks and death.

And of early morning raids when one
lay listening with pounding heart

to the heavy clattering of boots
on the cobblestoned streets.

When the television arrived,

Mother's stories were replaced
by what it had to offer.

I became more confused
as the baddies in my mother's tales

were also the heroes on TV.

The British Army
always fought for the right side

and the police
were always the good guys.

Then came 1968,
and my life began to change.

Regularly, I noticed the specials
attacking and baton-charging

the crowds of people who all of
a sudden began marching on streets.

I knew that they were our people
who were on the receiving end.

My sympathies and feelings
really became aroused

after watching the scenes
at Burntollet.

That imprinted on my mind
like a scar.

I became angry.

The whole world exploded,

and my own little world
just crumbled around me.

There was no-one to save us
except the boys,

as my father called the men
who defended our district

with a handful of old guns.

People had risen
and were fighting back,

and my mother and her newly
found spirit of resistance

hurled encouragement at the TV,
shouting, "Give it to them, boys!"

At 18 and a half I joined the Provos

with an M1 carbine and enough hate
to topple the world.

DISTANT SINGING

# Go home
Yeah, soldiers, go home

# Go home
Soldiers, go home. #

In many ways, Bobby Sands is not
what you expect when you anticipate

an IRA background. He's not someone
whose family is steeped in it.

And I think in some ways,

that's quite telling
and appropriate,

because many of the people who
swelled the ranks of the Provos

during the 1970s
were people who were, really,

not so much products of
family tradition

as they were products of
the escalating violence

and inter-communal tensions
in Northern Ireland.

When he saw that and saw the
combination between the kind of

violence that was happening on the
streets by these kinds of gangs,

and also the way in which they were
more or less

being sponsored by the state,

then that kind of combination
made it political.

There were many people who knew him
at that time who told me,

"We all became political,
but we didn't really know

"why we were political."

Fasting in Ireland was rediscovered
in the late 19th century

by anthropologists
who were investigating

kind of Gaelic history.

And for those scholars, who were
trying to revive Irish nationalism,

there's an emphasis
on the ancient Gaelic laws,

and it became discovered

that there was a kind of almost
institutionalised fasting

to rectify an injustice.

And this became popularised by
the play by WB Yeats

called The King's Threshold.

Hunger striking has very ancient
roots in Irish history.

It was tradition that if the poet
wasn't paid by the rich man,

he would starve himself
outside his gate.

It struck a chord in Irish history -

particularly from the Fenians
onwards,

hunger striking or forms of protest
in jail began to evolve.

I'm feeling exceptionally well
today.

It's only the third day, I know,
but all the same, I'm feeling great.

I had a visit this morning
with two reporters.

Couldn't quite get my flow of
thoughts together.

I could have said more
in a better fashion.

Firstly, I did not support
the armed struggle,

I do not agree with the files.

I felt an imperative
to try and get the prisoners,

their side of the story.

I saw my role as a journalist

to afflict the comfortable,

and comfort the afflicted.

He spoke fluently about
how they felt compelled

to start this hunger strike

and he made it pretty clear to me
that he was likely to die.

The situation in our province would
not be tolerated for one second

in any other part of
the United Kingdom.

But our political leaders, they
don't know anything about the fear

that makes Ulster Protestants tick!

They don't know anything about
the real deep convictions

of the Protestant people.

There are men in Ulster who will
stand to the last man

in defence of their heritage.

There are men in Ulster who will die
rather than pull down the flag.

The Protestant reaction

was bewilderment at the scale
of the IRA violence.

That something that had begun as
civil rights disturbances and so on,

quite quickly, though,
became something else.

It spawned, of course,
a reaction on the Loyalist side,

who wished to terrorise Catholics.

The IRA would
rationalise its actions

in terms of oppression by
the British and so on.

And yet ordinary Protestants and
Unionists were on the front line.

And one had all kinds of
responses to it,

ranging from a kind of
cynical understanding...

..and yet at the same time
a sense of outrage.

We as a government

are concerned with the wellbeing
of all prisoners.

We have taken a number of steps to
improve the conditions of those held

in custody. But we are not prepared
to give in to blackmail

in the form of a hunger strike
or of any other form of pressure.

They put a table in my cell

and are now placing my food on it
in front of my eyes.

I honestly couldn't give a damn
if they placed it on my knee.

It is not damaging me,
because I think

human food can never
keep a man alive forever.

And I console myself with the fact
that I'll get a great feed up above.

If I'm worthy.

The first time I met him
was near the end of 1971.

There was a family next door
that was called the Noade family.

And the girl called Geraldine
was the daughter.

And Bobby was seeing her.

Quickly grasped
that he was in the 'RA,

you know, in Fermanagh.
And they also had a lot in common.

Impression I got of Bobby
was that he's a bubbly fella.

We used to slag him
he looked like Rod Stewart.

Used to have big hair.

So we called him Rod Stewart,
you know, he loved it.

With his big hair, like.

Then he got caught.

Geraldine came into
my mother's house.

And said, "Bobby's caught
with parts of a gun."

It was the autumn of '72.

I was charged, and for the first
time I faced jail.

I had no alternative but to face up
to the hardship that lay before me.

I ended up sentenced
in a barbed wire cage

where I spent three and a half years
as a prisoner of war

with special category status.

Throughout the history of the state
of the North of Ireland,

the British government
have been well aware

that Irish Republicans
believe themselves

to be political prisoners.

And in 1972,

the British government
basically conceded political status,

although they preferred to call it
Special Category Status.

And there was peace in the prisons.

It gave the prisoners
certain privileges.

They didn't have to work,
they wore their own clothes,

and received regular parcels,
visits and letters.

But there was nothing to say that
they should live in POW compounds

with their military structures
intact.

That came about
because there was no alternative.

At the time, the jails were full.

So, inside the compounds,
you're dealing with an army?

Yes.

The huts were locked up
at nine o'clock at night.

They were unlocked at half seven,
eight o'clock in the morning.

But, basically, you had control
over your own day.

So we got our time in
by developing our own real sense

of the type of Ireland
that we wished to see.

It was the first time I met people
like Bobby Sands, people like that.

And during the debates we would
start looking at other struggles

and similarities,
and trying to find out

what it was that would take our own
struggle that stage further.

It was a very revolutionary period.

We had a vast library,

all political theories
from Stalin to Churchill

to Mao Tse-tung to Ho Chi Minh.

"You want a better understanding
of what's happening here?

"There you go, read that."

A key thing that happened at that
point in time was when Gerry Adams

came into the area known as Cage 11.

In Cage 11, I mean, there was
this new recombination of politics,

where Adams was saying, "Well,
OK, guys, we learned about Marx,

"we learned about Mao,
we've learned about Che.

"But, you know, what about
our own people?"

And he begins to get them to
think about the kinds of things

that Connolly wrote about,
that Liam Mellows wrote about.

Well, I met Bobby...

It must have been around 1976
or '77.

I'd say he was quite modest,
but very intense.

He was deeply troubled and
challenged by the sectarian nature

of our society.

He went back to reading Jimmy Hope,

he went back to reading
Mary Ann McCracken,

he went back to reading Wolfe Tone.

You know, the sense of citizenship,

of communities
needing to be empowered.

And how could you develop

in your own neighbourhood
or your own community...

..a Republican ethos?

I was lonely for a while
this evening,

listening to the crows caw
as they returned home.

Now, as I write,

the odd curlew mournfully calls
as they fly over.

I like the birds.

Well, I must leave off,

for if I write more about the birds,

my tears will fall and my thoughts
return to the days of my youth.

Those were the days,

and gone forever now.

Between 1917 and 1923,

there were at least 10,000 hunger
strikes by Irish Republicans.

The Irish Republicans were borrowing
a tactic that had been pioneered

by an Englishwoman in 1909.

She was a suffragette who was
fighting for the votes for women.

And her hunger strike showed just
how effective this tactic could be

when fighting against
the Westminster government.

MacSwiney, of course,
being a Lord Mayor,

and this extraordinary form
of protest...

Even after a world war,
it caught the imagination,

and particularly
revolutionary-minded people

in the world saw this.

One of their students at the time
in London was Ho Chi Minh.

And he was very impressed
by MacSwiney

and by the Irish struggle generally.

MacSwiney said, "It is not those
who can inflict the most,

"but those who can suffer the most
who will win..."

..which is a very striking
and radical thought.

The whole tradition
of military conflict is,

you've gotta inflict more suffering
on the other guy

in order to win the war.

And what MacSwiney had said was,
actually, you know, by suffering,

and by suffering publicly
and over a long period of time,

you are making a statement.

You're making a statement which was,
you will outlast the others.

No matter what they do to you,

you'll still be there,
or your spirit will still be there

or the people who will follow you
will still be there.

And in the end, you will win.

I have poems in my mind,
mediocre no doubt...

Poems of hunger-striking
MacSwiney...

..and everything that this hunger
strike has stirred up in my heart

and in my mind.

Frank has now joined me
on the hunger strike.

I have the greatest respect,
admiration and confidence in Frank,

and I know that I'm not alone.

Now and again I'm struck by
the natural desire to eat,

but the desire to see an end
to my comrades' plight

and the liberation of my people
is overwhelmingly greater.

Well, when he came out of jail
in 1976, I think it was,

he came down to the Republican
press centre on the Falls Road

where I was the editor
of Republican News.

He was setting up a tenants
association in Twinbrook

and also wanted to produce
a community newspaper.

I realised that here was somebody
who was quite progressive,

articulate, left wing, and really
interested in his community.

Bobby had been released
a number of weeks before me...

..and he talked about broadening the
struggle to involve our community

much more in the resistance
to the British.

One of the sort of lessons that we
brought out of Long Kesh was that

if you have an Active Service Unit
in an area...

Come here, mate. ..if the British
manage to take them out,

that kills the Republican presence.

Whereas if you can build different
levels of Republican resistance,

from a youth movement to
a woman's movement to a community...

If you build all these structures,
well, then,

if the Active Service Unit
does fall,

it means they're not leaving
a vacuum.

So we understood the theory of
revolutionary warfare,

and that's the way we came at it.

Many prisoners, they come out of
prison and they've been reading Che,

they've been reading Ho Chi Minh.

And basically they're saying,
"This is what we need to be doing,

"is being like Ho or Che."

But Bobby wasn't like that.

What Bobby began to think was,

"We have British imperialism
all around us.

"We don't wait until we send
the British Army out of Ireland.

"What we do now is we begin to build
the kind of society we want."

He was married
while he was in prison.

So, the fact of having a wife
and having a child

and having to support all that
was very new to Bobby...

..which meant that he always had the
tension of an activist and a father.

Then Geraldine got pregnant.

She wanted Bobby to spend more time
in the house.

She wanted Bobby
to pay more attention to her.

You were committed
to the armed struggle,

and committed to your comrades,

and your personal relationships
took second place.

As happened in hundreds of cases,
it just didn't work out for them.

NEWS PRESENTER: Bombers had attacked
a warehouse in Belfast.

As the police moved in,
there was a gun battle.

Mr Sands was charged
with possession of a gun nearby.

At his trial, although he couldn't
be connected with the bombing,

he was given 14 years.

NEWS PRESENTER: The government ruled
on March the first

that terrorists convicted
of crimes after that date

would no longer get
Special Category Status

but must wear prison uniform
just like ordinary criminals.

Anybody who was arrested
after midnight

on the first of March 1976
would be a criminal.

But if you were arrested with
a nuclear bomb

at five to 12, you were political.
It was absurd.

They had special interrogation
centres, special courts,

and they built a special jail,
the H-Blocks of Long Kesh.

NEWS PRESENTER: This is a normal
prison, not a prisoner of war camp.

Here, the prison officers
are in control.

The facilities are excellent.

Trades and skills are taught
to persuade the inmates

that there is more to life
than shooting and bombing.

So, they didn't conform.

They went to their compounds,
they went to Freedom Association,

and above all they weren't allowed
to wear their own clothes.

That was the spark
that lit the fuse.

What they didn't calculate,

and none of us could have, because
there was no Republican plan...

..was Kieran Nugent.

They said, "Right, take your clothes
off and put this uniform on."

He said that the only way that they
would get him to wear the uniform

was if they nailed it to his back.

At that, he lifted a blanket,

wrapped it round himself,
and the blanket protest was born.

The administration took away
their clothes, took away their beds,

took away lockers,
took away books, radios,

toothbrushes,

blocked up their windows,

wouldn't give them exercise,

wouldn't let them have
weekly visits.

You have to remember that
the situation in the jails

was like a pressure cooker.
It was boiling up.

So, the prisoners would tell you,

the warders began kicking over
their commodes.

Then they, in retaliation,

began throwing their faeces
out the window,

and the warders apparently began
throwing it back in again.

So there was no place else to put it
except on the walls.

Literally, the most fundamental
method of warfare ever

was carried on in the jails.

At the start
it was indescribably horrible.

There was the excreta on the walls,

there was urine being thrown out
every night

and getting washed back in again.

You were lying on a mattress on
the floor which was getting smaller

because you were pulling bits
of the mattress off

to smear your excretion
on the walls.

But after a month or so, it became
just a normal way of living.

When one spends each day naked and
crouching in the corner of a cell

resembling a pigsty...

..staring at such eyesores
as piles of putrefying rubbish,

infested with maggots and flies,

a disease-ridden chamber pot
or a blank,

disgusting scarred wall...

..it is to the rescue of one's
sanity to be able to rise

and gaze out of the window
at the world.

Today, the screws began blocking up

all the windows with sheets
of steel.

To me, this represents the further
torture of the tortured -

blocking out the very essence
of life, nature.

Here, my torturers
have long ago started,

and still endeavour,
to block up the window on my mind.

It was very hostile.

You couldn't ask for
a more hostile environment.

We were working in an open sewer

with 40 people
who wanted to kill us.

Basically, that's what it is.

You have 40 people down there
who wanted you dead.

You were reasonably safe in work,
but then you were driving home.

You didn't know what was meeting you
there, which happened quite a lot.

A knock on the door,
nine mil in the head.

NEWS PRESENTER: The Provisional IRA
gunned down on his own doorstep

Albert Miles, the deputy governor
of the Maze prison.

This killing was followed by
the murder...

Between 1979 and 1982, there were
14 prison officers murdered,

ten of them in one year.

They were sending letter bombs
to our houses.

They were addressing them
to their wives.

There were putting plastic boxes
under the cars.

They didn't care
who was driving the car.

They didn't care whether you were
taking your kids to school.

They didn't give a toss, so why
should I give a toss about them?

But everybody wanted these people
locked up.

"That's OK," I said. "Lock them up
and throw away the key,

"but somebody has to unlock
that door."

And I am the poor sucker
that had to open the door.

The British government have said
they won't concede political status,

and the prisoners,
in their statement today,

have repeated their intention
of fasting to the death

in order to obtain it.

If Bobby Sands continues his fast,

then the crisis in this hunger
strike will come around Easter.

Foremost in my tortured mind is
the thought 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.

There is a tradition
in republicanism

of a rising in every generation,

no matter how hopeless.

That was very much to the fore
in 1916.

They hadn't a hope of winning,
and they knew it. But they did it.

Fire!

1916, to Republicans,
is a bit like High Mass.

It was the executions
and the creation of martyrs

that changed, in 1916,

into a right-angled turning point
in Ireland.

It changed into
the willingness to endure.

Bobby Sands was deeply aware of
the fact

that he wasn't just
this isolated individual

at a particular point in time.

He very consciously saw himself
in a tradition,

which was the 1916 tradition.

The only way we can win
is emotional and metaphorical,

and we can win by sacrifice.

So he knows enough about the culture
that he comes from

to know that this is going to hit
certain nerve endings

within the collective psyche.

It's going to connect
with Irish republicanism

and its martyr traditions,

but it's also going to connect
with Catholicism.

It's going to connect
with the idea of Christ.

Protestants would have found
incomprehensible...

..that notion that young men
could contemplate

starving themselves to death

for what were
quite modest political aims.

But in fact those modest,
quantifiable demands...

..were actually enveloped by...

..the much bigger demand
that Irish republicanism

requires of its participants.

It is the declared wish
of these people to see humane

and better conditions
in these blocks.

But the issue at stake
is not humanitarian.

It is purely political, and only
a political solution will solve it.

We wish to be treated
not as ordinary prisoners,

for we are not criminals -
we admit no crime unless

the love of one's people
and country is a crime.

Where there is discord,
may we bring harmony.

Where there is error,
may we bring truth.

Where there is doubt,
may we bring faith.

And where there is despair,
may we bring hope.

Well, quite clearly the election
of Margaret Thatcher

by an extraordinary majority
was an enormous achievement.

And we all knew
that British politics

was not going to be the same again,

that many things were going to
change in the field of industry,

of industrial relations,
and, of course,

we had the problems
of Northern Ireland.

Her views on Northern Ireland
were mainstream Unionist views -

a sort of general feeling
that people who want to be British

should be,
and they should be defended.

And above all, the thing which
excited her deepest emotion

was support for the Armed Forces
and the police,

and the idea that they were being
targeted and killed by enemies

of Britain was abhorrent to her.

She understood there were injustices
to the nationalist population,

but she didn't equate
Irish republicanism

with the nationalist population.

It wasn't,
"They're Irish, who cares?"

It was, "These are terrorists trying
to undermine the rule of law."

And with that,
there should be no compromise.

We knew that particularly,
of course,

because on the eve of the election,
Airey Neave,

who would have been her Secretary
of State for Northern Ireland,

had been murdered
by Irish republicans.

So we knew
times were not going to be easy.

Once we came out of '78,
towards the end of '79,

we realised that
the no-wash protest,

it wasn't enough to break the will
of the Brits

to negotiate for
some sort of settlement.

So in the middle of 1979, the idea
of hunger strike was broached.

We targeted late September
as the date.

We asked for volunteers
around the blocks, for people.

And the names came flooding in.

Seven convicted IRA terrorists at
the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland

began their threatened hunger strike
this morning.

Later, another 142 men joined

the existing so-called
dirty no-wash protest.

This means that nearly half the
prisoners here live in conditions

of self-imposed filth.

The decision of seven men
to go on hunger strike is seen as

a last-ditch attempt to gain
political status for these men.

Bobby Sands was livid
that he wasn't on it.

The argument was that
you can't put everybody on this.

And they said, "Bobby Sands,
you're taking over as OC.

"That's it."

NEWS PRESENTER: A year ago,
only the relatives

and few hundred republican diehards

could be expected to turn up
at an H-Block rally.

Now, under a constant barrage
of propaganda,

there are several thousands.

The British knew that they were
in a struggle,

they were in a battle here,

because in terms of hearts and minds
they were losing this campaign.

At the beginning of the hunger
strike, they underestimated

the determination of Mrs Thatcher.

Here was a Prime Minister
under massive pressure.

The economy was tanking at the time,
there was mass unemployment.

So the impression was, here was
somebody who could be broken.

But what boxed her in was that
she inherited this policy,

she inherited this policy
from the Labour government.

It was the Labour government
who ended Special Category Status.

And once you inherit that policy,
you couldn't back down.

Morally, the hunger strike
was very simple in her mind.

These people had committed these
crimes and they should be punished

for them, and they should have
no special rights.

And the hunger strike
was a way of blackmailing her.

It was a sort of completely
unacceptable form of leverage.

After 54 days, with one
of the strikers close to death,

the IRA's Commanding Officer
in the H blocks, Brendan Hughes,

took the decision
to call off the hunger strike.

The prisoners believed
through intermediaries

that the British government
was about to make concessions.

But they misread the signals.

It quickly became apparent
that they had no deal.

The arrangement was that Britain
wasn't to call off the hunger strike

without consulting Bobby Sands,

because Bobby was the OC
of the prisoners.

He had succeeded Brendan.

Bobby was one of the boys, you know.

Which is why, when he was made OC,
we were thinking,

"Bobby's a nice guy and he's
talented and all the rest of it..."

But to me the most fascinating thing
is how the person in a moment

becomes a leader
in all intents and purposes

and says to Brendan,
"You fucked up."

I think in the end they realised
that the government was simply

not going to give them
what they had been demanding,

and that therefore
they had the choice

either of dying or of living.

As soon as the strike ended,

one of the problems that Bobby Sands
had as Officer Commanding

was the morale of the prisoners.

So it was an absolute period
of crisis

in trying to keep the protest going
after so many years.

Then he realised that what happened
in the jail was important

for what was happening
on the outside.

Bobby immediately said,
"There's only one thing for it.

"We're going back on hunger strike."

The leadership sent in word -

"Under no circumstances will we
sanction a second hunger strike."

And Bobby fought with them.

And in the end he said, "Look,
you either sack me or back me."

Some people, I think, referred to it
as a kind of a tunnel vision,

that Bobby at this point became
so concentrated on this one thing.

This is something that we can't even
understand unless we see it

in the context of the whole group.

They weren't just facing
the world alone.

They were facing the future
as a collectivity...

..and the sole criterion for getting
on the second hunger strike was,

"Would you be willing to die?

"Because if you don't die, this
is going to hurt the rest of us."

And Bobby said, "That's the reason
I'm going on first,

"is because I will die."

He has, first of all,
a certain sense of guilt.

People like MacSwiney had a sense of
guilt that they hadn't taken part

in the 1916 rising, for example.

And therefore, when the opportunity
came to do something,

they felt this extra burden, that
they had to take it on themselves.

And I think Bobby Sands maybe felt

after the first
failed hunger strike,

and him having been the OC,
felt this sense of duty.

And he comes across...

What's moving is he comes across
as a very young man,

and with all of the intact idealism
that the young can have.

He sees his own actions
as being moral actions,

as being good and righteous.

That's why he is challenging,
I think,

particularly for people
who don't agree with him,

don't agree with
where he is coming from -

you still can't deny,
from the writings, the sincerity.

This guy, you get a sense
when you read him,

is absolutely conscious
of his place in history.

But he is not indulging it.

It's not as if he is driven by
a megalomaniacal idea that,

"I'm going to be
this godlike figure."

You don't get that
from his writings.

What you get from his writings
is a very old-fashioned,

almost Victorian sense of duty.

I have always taken a lesson from
something that was told to me

by a sound man.

That is that everyone,

republican or otherwise,

has his own particular part to play.

No part is too great or too small.

No-one is too old or too young
to do something.

Just a normal day, I open the cell,
the prisoner said to me,

"I'm refusing food."

"OK, no problem."

The food was left in the cell.

It was two scoops of potato,
fish, one ladleful of peas,

two slices of bread with butter,
and tea.

It's like I said to them,
"I'm putting the food into you.

"If you don't want to eat it,
that's up to you.

"We'll put the food in,
we'll take the food out.

"And we'll do that
three times a day."

And that was their choice.

If they wanted to commit suicide,
that was their choice.

Tonight's tea was pie and beans,

and although hunger
may fuel my imagination,

I don't exaggerate - the beans
were nearly falling off the plate.

If I say this all the time to
the lads, they would worry about me.

But I'm all right.

One of the big difficulties

that the support movement
for the prisoners

on the inside faced
was a lack of publicity.

There was practically no publicity
in advance of it starting,

and practically no publicity while
the hunger strike was unfolding

and Bobby Sands was leading it.

There had been so much attention
given to the first one

that the view from the leadership
outside was it would be difficult

to attain the same level
of mobilisation

due to the fact that didn't work.

The first few weeks was pretty flat
in terms of protest on the streets.

The Frank Maguire thing
was the catalyst.

Frank Maguire, who had been
the MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone...

About two weeks
into Bobby's hunger strike,

Frank Maguire collapsed
and died of a heart attack.

I immediately thought to myself,
if it was possible,

and if there was a by-election,

we should put Bobby Sands's
name forward

to stand in Fermanagh South Tyrone.

We had major worries about it,
of course.

We would have to get the agreement
of Bobby Sands,

and even if Bobby lost by one vote,
Thatcher would have crowed,

"Even your own people rejected you."

Within the provisional
republican movement

there had been a deep scepticism
about electoral politics,

because there was a notion that
the North was a place in which

the electoral maths
was against you by design,

so when you put someone up for
election to the House of Commons,

this in itself is a change
of approach of a dramatic kind.

But it was a risk, because it was
breaking with the instincts

of provisional republicanism,

which had been hostile
towards the compromises

which they saw as being involved
in electoral politics.

At the time I think people saw it

as a politicisation
of the hunger strike itself.

And some people saw that
as a great thing,

as a way of kind of
democratising that struggle.

And some people saw it
as a cynical move.

This was Sinn Fein
trying to take advantage

of this extraordinary situation
that was going on within the prison.

My body is broken and cold.

I'm lonely and I need comfort.

From somewhere afar I hear those
familiar voices which keep me going.

"We're with you, son.

"We are with you."

I went in to get him to sign papers.

At the time I was only 26, 27,

and obviously didn't realise

what maybe I was getting into.

But, however,

I said to him, I remember, and he
was a bit offended, I said to him,

"If you ever think of changing
your mind about this, tell me."

He says,
"That doesn't arise at all."

I noticed that his dinner
was sitting on the tray.

I did obviously realise
that this was a very serious place,

and that this man meant business,
you know.

And he did say to me,
he said he would die.

He said, "I know that I will die."

Hunger strikes
are a peculiarly modern tactic.

They fit in two ways
with developments

in the contemporary world,

one of which is the power
of the media,

which means that somebody suffering
in one place in the world

can be accessible
to everybody in the world.

So states become more and more
reluctant to create victims

or create martyrs,
at least publicly.

And therefore, if the state
is not going to create martyrs,

people will have to make martyrs
of themselves.

So in 1963,

we saw the incredibly potent image

of the Buddhist monk
from South Vietnam

who set himself on fire.

And that became an image
that was beamed around the world,

and became crucial in undermining
the American regime

in South Vietnam.

And that's an example of the kind of
power of self-inflicted suffering

to move people, even people who have
no connection with the struggle.

So we were very conscious,
if we were to achieve anything

within our own publicity,

that the imagery of our prisoners...
We had to humanise them.

Bobby had went into prison
very early,

so there weren't really
any great photographs of him.

I remember the ones we had taken,

that's the ones when we were
in the prison.

That particular one was Tomboy,
myself, Bobby and Denis.

I don't know where the camera
came from.

I still don't know where it came
from or who owned it

and the photo was taken.

The image doesn't give you any
deep reading of the expression

or of that person.

So the sort of ambiguity of
the image itself is crucial

to the projection of martyrdom
onto the figure...

..and it's really
this kind of dialogue

between the image and the viewer,

the viewer thinking of
the suffering,

or the kind of otherworldliness
of what they've done.

And images have a certain impact,

or a certain potency, you could say.

But it takes events
outside of the image to create

the full kind of fusion,
if you like, of that iconography.

NEWS PRESENTER:
After the First World War,

Churchill wrote that entire
countries had been swept away,

but the dreary spires of Fermanagh
and Tyrone still stood intact.

There are 5,000 more nationalist
voters than unionist voters here,

and only the unwillingness to elect
an IRA man will cut into that.

Well, it's a terrible choice between
a provisional IRA man on one hand,

and a reactionary
discredited unionist.

So it is an acute dilemma for
a large number of Catholics

in the constituency.

People are not being asked
to come out

and make any decision
in opposition to

or in favour of violence
or armed struggle or anything else.

Bobby Sands is the single
anti-unionist candidate

in this election,
standing on a single issue.

A lot of what Bobby Sands was doing
in a way was taking one truth

and making a different truth.

The truth he was taking

was the truth that actually
the IRA was not suffering.

The IRA was not a victim
in the Troubles.

The vast majority of IRA killings
were pretty safe for the killer.

Their classic weapon
was the car bomb.

You set the bomb, you walked away
from the carnage, you were safe.

You walked up to somebody's door,
you knocked on the door,

you shot somebody in the head,
you walked away.

You placed a mine on a road
when a British Army convoy

was coming along,
and you did it by remote control.

And remote control
is not the warrior's honour.

What the hunger strikes did partly
for the IRA, I think,

was reversed that truth.

They couldn't do their courage
in the usual way that soldiers do,

so how could you do it?

You could do it by dying.

Here was someone on their behalf,
almost, who was saying,

"I will show exemplary courage,"

and therefore somehow change
in people's heads

the idea of what this movement
is about.

He was only a child in '68 when
the civil rights movement started.

But the IRA really didn't understand
what Bobby Sands was doing.

What does the IRA go and do?

Right in the heart of
the election campaign, they murder,

in the most grotesque way,
Joanne Mathers, mother of two,

for the awful crime
of collecting census forms.

So they're saying, "You know what?

"It still is about killing
and we're going to keep doing it."

And for the voters in
Fermanagh South Tyrone,

you have this awful dilemma.

What are they actually voting for?

Joanne Mathers is buried
on the day of the election results.

So are they voting compassionately
to save a life

or are they voting
for an organisation

which is in the business
of taking life?

The count took place in the
technical college in Enniskillen.

I've never seen so many cameramen,
press, from Radio Moscow,

Radio Prague, Australia, Japan,
all there because they saw this,

I think, in terms of
David versus Goliath.

There was Bobby Sands,
there was Thatcher.

Sands, Bobby, Anti H-Block, Armagh,

political prisoner - 30,492.
CHEERING

West, Henry W, Ulster Unionist -

29,046.

And I declare that Bobby Sands
has been duly elected

to serve as a member
for this constituency.

CHEERING

I always remember the smile on
his mother and his sister's face.

I presume they would have believed
and hoped

that it would have saved his life.

I went in to see him the next day
and he was pleased,

but he said to me, he says,
"It makes no difference."

He said, "It will make
no difference to me."

He knew. He seemed to have it
worked out, you know?

It is a tremendous boost
for the H-Block campaign,

but it's bound to be regarded
throughout the world

as much more than that -

as a victory for the IRA.

NEWS PRESENTER: Sands's election to
parliament embarrassed the British

and it has made Sands more than the
folk hero he had already become.

This 11-year-old boy sitting
on the debris of a recent riot

says Sands is dying for him.

POLICE OFFICER: You are causing
an obstruction.

You are required to disperse.

I have no doubts or regrets
about what I am doing

for I know what I have faced
for eight years,

and in particular for the last four
and a half years, others will face.

All men must have hope
and never lose heart...

..but my hope lies in the ultimate
victory for my poor people.

Is there any hope greater than that?

England was the big fish
in the small pool,

and then suddenly the big whale
of America swims in.

If America gets involved,
everything changes.

They are political prisoners,

whether the British
say they are or not.

And let's pray for a united Ireland.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
INDISTINCT CHEERING

We are screaming
that the British Government

has to end the war.

I believed that the solution
was getting America involved.

The more people who put pressure
on the American government

to do something, the better.

It was a difficult one

to explain to an Irish-American
audience.

This is being used to whip up
support for a violent movement.

But when you are conveying
a complex message

against the Provos' simple message -
"Brits out" - our job was not easy.

Here we were in America at the time,

and the narrative that we had come
to accept about the Troubles

in Northern Ireland
was a romantic group of victims,

that when they went to the streets,

they were doing it out of a sense
of pride and desperation.

It was a romanticised version
of the problem.

And in comes this character
named Bobby Sands,

and what he did
was a brilliant political move.

There was a sense here of people
ready to transcend the past.

There were voices, including,
most prominently, Senator Kennedy's,

that found a way of saying,

"We must help the British appreciate
that they should meet the conditions

"Bobby and the other hunger strikers
had set forth."

And I think something
we didn't quite appreciate

was just how stubborn the British
could be,

even against their own interests.

Oh, no. I mean, nobody would suggest
for a moment, would they,

that an MP who commits an offence
and is sentenced to prison

should be treated differently
from anybody else?

I'm not suggesting it, and I don't
think anybody else is either.

That's where the diplomatic effort
comes in.

They have to up their
counter-propaganda efforts,

and it is counter-propaganda.

It is about an image of what you're
trying to project to the world.

Sinn Fein rejected
the British Parliament anyway,

so it was a sort of publicity stunt,

but it was a publicity stunt
with the power of votes.

And that was alarming.

Mrs Thatcher was a very conscious of
the propaganda battle in Washington

and she fought it back.

Irish-Americans, including
Teddy Kennedy, God bless him,

were scared off,
because criticise the British,

and you'll be seen as
supporting the IRA.

And that was the simple tactic of
both the British and Irish embassy,

and it worked. While we might ask
the American administration

to ask Thatcher
to soften her stance,

we were not going to ask them to
intervene in an active sense

in the affairs of another country.

They had larger concerns involving
the IRA as a troublesome element,

and a criminal element,
in many eyes,

and I think that just trumped
the issue.

But of course, not that long after
the start of the hunger strike,

President Reagan is shot.

He's out of action
for about ten days in the hospital,

and we were about to break
diplomatic relationships

with Libya on the issue
of terrorism.

At the end of the day,

the view of the White House
was that while, in a sense,

you could say that a man like
Bobby Sands was a prisoner

of conscience,
that cause and that organisation

is also a terrorist organisation.

I was thinking today
about the hunger strike.

People say a lot about the body.
I don't trust it.

I consider
there is a kind of fate indeed.

Firstly, the body doesn't accept
the lack of food...

..and it suffers from
the temptation of food.

The body fights back, sure enough...

..but at the end of the day,
everything returns

to the primary consideration -
that is, the mind.

So loss of weight the first month
is gradual,

and it's not as catastrophic
as one would imagine.

And during that month the body
is not yet digesting itself.

It's not the weight change
which radically changes.

It's the effects of the whole
fasting which kicks in.

Between 35 and 45 days is what
the Chief Medical Officer told me...

What he called
the ocular motor phase.

The muscles in your eyes don't work
as well as they should

and you get nystagmus.

You get these rapid eye movements
which are uncontrollable,

and it's extremely unpleasant.

It causes vomiting, and it was
the phase that hunger strikers

who were beginning to strike
feared the most.

After day 45, all of a sudden
the vertigo stops.

After the vertigo ends,

the person comprehends everything
and he can make a rational decision.

But this is not going to last
very long, and you have this entity

called anosognosia
which means the person

does no longer realise exactly how
serious the situation is.

Maggie! Out! Maggie! Out!

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie!
Out, out, out!

You could very quickly see
on the streets of Dublin,

on the streets of Cork,

that the emotional power
was beginning to draw in people

who had not previously been
involved in Republican politics

and had probably not even been
involved in politics at all.

And that's what terrified
the southern government.

I mean, they were really
very, very scared by this.

You've got to remember,
in the Republic,

most people didn't want to know
about the North.

You know, they had been
psychologically prepared

to wake up in the morning
and hear the latest atrocity

and then try to get on with
the rest of the day

without paying any attention to it.

There was this terror
that the Troubles

were going to spill
across the border.

But Fianna Fail, which was
the dominant political party

in the south,

was particularly sensitive to this

because it had put itself forward
as being the real Republican party

on the islands of Ireland.

In my view, a declaration by the
British Government of their interest

in encouraging the unity
of Ireland...

CHEERING DROWNS SPEECH

And then, with the hunger strikes,

you had Sinn Fein and the IRA making
a really vivid claim to saying,

"You are not the Republicans,
we are the Republicans."

You can pull up your rhetoric,

we can pull up the bodies
of starving men.

I'm continually... I'm still very
deeply concerned and anxious

about the H-Block situation.

And the British Government
fully understand that concern.

An election is pending.

Now, that is what worries
Mr Haughey,

that he is going to lose power.

The electoral arithmetic
is very tight

and any growth in support
for H-Block supporters

could be translated into elections
to the Dail,

and you see an increasing number
of desperate attempts

to try and produce some sort
of initiative - anything.

Mr Bobby Sands,
the IRA hunger striker,

has been given the last rites
by a Roman Catholic priest

in the hospital of the Maze prison
near Belfast.

The Northern Ireland Office
has granted his request

for a special visit from the Dublin
MPs Sile de Valera, Neil Blaney

and John O'Connell,

in the hope that they can persuade
him to give up his seven-week fast.

It was a very, obviously,
emotional meeting.

Dr John O'Connell,
who was Health Minister,

he says to Neil Blaney,
"I'm going to ask him to come off."

And Blaney says, "Don't.
You can't do that."

He says, "I am. I have to."

He was very ill.
He was blind in one eye,

because I always remember him
rubbing his eye.

And Sile de Valera was crying.

O'Connell pressed Bobby to come off
but he said he wasn't

and he told him about
all the suffering

that they had done in the H-Blocks.

And that only exacerbated
the situation with Sile de Valera,

because she was actually crying
into an awful state then

when she heard
all that was going on, you know?

I found that I could not
persuade him.

I emphasised how important
his own life was.

I didn't think a life
was worth that.

But he was very determined

and I got the impression he was
fully resigned to die.

I've saw in this man
more determination

than I've ever seen
in any person before.

He now weighs 47kg.

He cannot read and he cannot focus
his eyesight

and believes he is going blind.

Himself thinks he has possibly
three or four days left to live.

There can be no possible concessions
on political status.

To do that, in fact, would put
many, many people into jeopardy.

If everyone said that a crime
which you and I regard as a crime,

described as a crime,
and which is a crime,

if ever there was an attempt to say
it is not a crime, it's political,

then everyone, I'm afraid,
would go in fear.

The prisoners are clearly recognised
as political prisoners.

It is stupid of Mrs Thatcher,
and it's idiotic of her,

to turn around and say,
"A crime is a crime is a crime."

When you have both protagonists
taking public stances,

what is lacking is trust.

The Government's position is there
will be no negotiations before

the end of the strike. Of course,
the prisoners didn't believe them,

and neither side wants to lose face,

and that's the tragedy of it.

NEWS PRESENTERS:
The IRA's Bobby Sands,

nearly blind and close to death,

today refused to meet with
two human rights mediators who went

to Maze Prison to try to persuade
Sands to end his hunger strike.

The authorities would not agree
to Mr Sands's conditions,

that his friends would be with him
when he met the delegation,

and the commissioners will not
now be taking up his case.

Outside the prison,
a group of loyalist protesters

angrily put the point

that the people in real need of
human rights justice

are those who'd suffered
as a result of IRA killings.

Bobby Sands is putting on
a performance for the world.

He is trying to get the maximum
publicity possible for his cause.

That is a cause
that has murdered people,

that has murdered children
in my constituency.

That's the cause
that Bobby Sands represents.

The Protestants are delighted that
Sands chose not to let

the Human Rights Commission
intervene to stop the hunger strike,

and ironically,
many Irish Republican sympathisers

are also happy that apparently Sands
still chooses death.

One said, "The IRA needs a martyr,
and Sands is a good one."

It has been some time since
Republican sympathisers

marched through Belfast
with quite this degree of support

and this degree
of emotional intensity,

and it took place in a mood of
bitterness and confusion

generated by the breakdown
of the mediation effort

by the human rights commissioners.

The Irish Prime Minister,
Mr Haughey,

came in for as much hostility
from the marchers as Mrs Thatcher.

We were helpless in terms of getting
the administration to intervene.

Ed Meese at that stage
was his chief of staff.

So I went to see Meese

and he started the conversation
by telling me

that, "We've had to deal with
difficult prison situations

"in California.
In dealing with prisoners,

"they only understand one thing,
and that's toughness.

"So I'm not going to advise
the President to phone

"the British Prime Minister
to dilute her toughness."

But it was a gift to the Provos.

Bobby Sands was reported
closer to death today...

Tension increased throughout Belfast
and there was more violence...

At the Vatican, Pope John Paul
begged the world...

NEWSREADER SPEAKS FRENCH

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 may be a sinner, but I stand,

and if it so be will die...

..happy knowing
that I do not have to answer

for what these people have done
to our ancient nation.

I was in the prison hospital.

The scene that greeted my eyes,
I couldn't believe.

He was lying on his back.
There was a cage.

The blankets were covering the cage

because they couldn't touch
his body.

And he said, "Who's that?"

And I said, "It's Jim, Bobby."

He said, "I can't see. I'm blind."

HE EXHALES SHAKILY

He reached out his hand.

We touched...

..we said goodbye...

..and he said,
"Tell the lads I'm hanging in."

This is the last visit
you'll have with him.

That's right.
Did you say goodbye to Bobby?

Yeah, we said goodbye.

And he just asked me,
"Was there any change?"

I told him there wasn't.

And he just said, "That's it, then."

He says, "Look after me ma.

"Go and see me ma."

So...

I would like to appeal
to the people...

..to remain calm
and have no fighting

or cause no death or destruction.

My son's offered his life
for better conditions in prison,

but not to cause
further death outside.

That's all I can say.
How is he today?

He's dying.

I can hear the curlew
passing overhead.

Such a lonely cell.

Such a lonely struggle.

But, my friend...

..this road is well trod,
and he, whoever he was

who first passed this way...

deserves the salute of the nation.

I am but a mere follower...

..and I must say oiche mhaith.

Goodnight.

NEWS PRESENTER: Bobby Sands's death
by hunger strike guarantees him

a place in the Republican pantheon,

an assured estimation
as an IRA martyr,

and one of the small but select
group whose self-inflicted deaths

have punctuated Irish history
during the 20th century.

Now, it's too soon to say,
and no-one knows...

SPEECH FADES OUT

I was actually home
when the word came through.

It was weird, because no-one spoke.

And...

They just walked down the street.

INDISTINCT SPEECH

And someone started singing
Faith Of Our Fathers.

And as they walked round
the neighbourhood,

it was one of the most spiritual
experiences ever.

Bearing in mind Bobby had gone,
it was almost as if...

..he has given us something new,
the strength of these people.

INDISTINCT SPEECH

NEWS PRESENTER: In Moscow,
the Soviet news agency Tass

described Bobby Sands
as a fighter for civil liberties

and the Maze Prison
as a concentration camp.

Tass said Sands had been condemned
to death by the government's refusal

to meet his demand
for political status.

The British Government's failure
to even attempt

to work for humanitarian resolution
reflects the moral bankruptcy

of their policies
in Northern Ireland.

It is my hope that the call of
Bobby Sands's mother for nonviolence

will be followed,
so that the British Government

can suffer the glare

of a much-deserved negative
world reaction.

One of the grim features of Irish
political history is it often seems

impaled by terrible events, by
catastrophe, down the centuries.

The death of Sands cast a foreshadow
of uncertainty and apprehension

on the island.

Was it one of those events
that changed things utterly,

to adapt William Butler Yeats,
speaking as he was of Easter 1916?

Certainly power beyond the facts
of some sort was going on.

Some seductive mystique
was once again being generated -

that curious mystique
of Irish republicanism,

physical-force Irish republicanism.

One of the great strengths
of Irish nationalism as a force

is its brilliant ability
to take the dead

and reshape them
as mythological characters.

And so Bobby Sands, of course,
through the funeral,

which was an extraordinary event...

He is sucked immediately into this
kind of mythological tradition,

and making it into something that's
no longer individual but in fact

has become timeless and historic
and some kind of essence

of what it means to be Irish.

Until Bobby died,

there was always the hope
that the British would introduce

some sort of reforms
to end the hunger strike.

But they didn't.

And then it was simply
a waiting game as we counted down

through the rest of our comrades.

Bobby Sands died a week ago, and the
British Government did not relent.

Do you believe that your brother's
death will make any difference

to their attitudes? Hopefully, yes.

But I would just like to say
that Margaret Thatcher

and the British Government
has murdered my brother.

They cannot break these men.

They cannot force these men
to accept criminal status.

They will carry it through,
because there was

another Republican hunger striker,
Terence MacSwiney,

and he left the Republicans
as saying,

"It is not those who can inflict
the most,

"but those who can suffer the most
who will win in the end."

Mrs Thatcher realised that,
terrible thought it would be,

the more people died,
the worse it would get for the IRA.

It didn't mean that she wanted
more people to die,

but she understood that the oddness
of the hunger strike as a weapon

was that it weakened
with each death.

The pressure comes on the people
who are organising the striking,

doesn't it? Why are we dying
if we're not getting anything?

CHEERING

She would think, what's the IRA
doing that they want mothers' sons

to die? What about the families?

And, indeed, that became an issue
in the hunger strike.

Throughout the hunger strike,

the prisoners in the Maze
rejected appeals to end their fast.

Papal envoys, priests, politicians,

Red Cross delegations
all came and went

without changing
the men's attitudes.

The cracks began to show
in the campaign

not inside the prison,
but from outside.

One by one, the prisoners reached
a crucial stage of their fast.

One by one, their families
stepped in to stop them dying.

Now, let me make it absolutely clear

as I say a word
about the hunger strike.

No concessions
have been made to the IRA

and there will be no perpetration

of anything
which looks like concessions

to those who commit violence.

The real irony
is that Bobby Sands...

He saw himself as a soldier
in the armed struggle of the IRA,

yet winning that election had
a really profound effect in terms

of reshaping the whole idea of what
Sinn Fein and the IRA could achieve.

Just through using the rhetoric
and using the imagery

that Bobby Sands had unleashed,

but using it in a way
that was persuasive to enough people

that they would vote for you.

The acts of Bobby Sands
came at a time

when the American political class

was sort of waking up
to their responsibility.

He forced us to recognise that there
were plenty of people

with whom we could work
if we were willing to expend

the political capital
to solve this problem.

You know, Bobby Sands,

maybe he didn't even understand
that something profound and good

was just about to happen.

It is what eventually
led to the Good Friday Accords.

There are turning points
in modern Irish history.

1916 is a turning point.

1981, those 66 days of Bobby Sands's
hunger strike,

are undoubtedly a turning point.

How are you keeping?

In a way, Bobby Sands did win.

He is always going to be there in
the consciousness of revolutionaries

around the world. But in fact,

he posed a really significant
challenge to revolutionaries

because by reaching back into Irish
history, into the notion that,

actually, you win by enduring
and not by inflicting suffering,

he changed the nature
of how people should think about

how they might force
political change.

You win when you capture
the public imagination.

I am standing on the threshold
of another trembling world.

May God have mercy on my soul.

# When inner scars

# Show in your face

# And darkness hides

# Your sense of place

# Well, I won't speak

# I will refrain

# And be the song

# Just be the song... #