Bobby Sands
Robert George "Bobby" Sands ( Irish Roibeard Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh ) (born March 9, 1954 in Belfast , Northern Ireland ; † May 5, 1981 in Maze Prison near Lisburn , Northern Ireland) was a member of the IRA , hunger striker and member of the House of Commons for Fermanagh & South Tyrone .
Life
Bobby Sands, a trained coachbuilder, became a member of the IRA in 1972 after traumatic experiences with violent Protestant criminals . He was sentenced to five years in prison after he was arrested in a house where four handguns were found. As a prisoner with special status , he could wear his civilian clothes and did not have to work. In 1976 he was released.
In 1977, Bobby Sands was convicted again for illegal gun possession: After a shooting with the police, Sands and Joe McDonnell , Seamus Finucane and Sean Lavery were caught in a getaway car that also contained a revolver. After eleven months of pre-trial detention, the men were sentenced to 14 years in prison in September 1977. Sands was serving his sentence in Maze Prison (also known as "Long Kesh"). Since 1976 there had been repeated protests by captured IRA members who wanted to enforce their classification as political prisoners. This status, which essentially corresponded to the status of prisoners of war , had been abolished by the British government and forced prisoners to wear prison clothing and work. Since they refused to wear the prison clothes, they spent their time naked in the cell wrapped in blankets, which led to the Blanket protest . Sands wrote the book "A Day in My Life" during the ceiling protest in Long Kesh. He did this with a pen that he hid in his body.
Since the inmates refused to work in prison, they were locked in a cell for up to 24 hours a day, which they contaminated with urine and excrement ( Dirty Protest ). 350 prisoners held out this protest for almost three years. After the government under Margaret Thatcher was not ready to negotiate, a further increase in the protests came on October 24, 1980, with a first hunger strike, in which Bobby Sands also took part. After 55 days, the inmates broke off their strike because a government negotiator promised concessions. According to the prisoners, the offers made afterwards did not go far enough.
Then Sands and other captured IRA members who were in the so-called H-Blocks of the prison went on the Irish hunger strike of 1981 from March 1st . Another inmate went on hunger strike every week in order, according to the calculation, to generate maximum political pressure by dying in rows. Sands had meanwhile been appointed IRA commander in prison and was an eloquent spokesman for his fellow inmates. Shortly after the hunger strike began, Sands was nominated for the Fermanagh & South Tyrone district's House of Commons by-election and won the April 9 election. He was officially Unterhaus- deputy , but his position because of his imprisonment could not compete. But this increased his level of awareness and the propaganda value of his hunger strike.
Bobby Sands died in prison hospital on May 5, 1981 after 66 days as a result of his hunger strike. After him, nine other hunger strikers died before the operation was officially canceled by the IRA on October 3, 1981, also under pressure from relatives of the strikers. Immediately after Sands' death, violent clashes broke out between demonstrators, police and the British military. Around 100,000 people attended his funeral procession in Belfast, almost a fifth of Northern Ireland's Catholic population at the time.
On October 6, 1981, the British government allowed detainees to wear civilian clothes again. Most of the other requirements were met in the period that followed, even if the IRA prisoners were never officially recognized as political prisoners. Former priest Denis Bradley and ex-IRA fighter Richard O'Rawe claimed that the IRA sacrificed the lives of its fighters in Long Kesh for the sake of political ambition, given the British government's offer after the death of the first four hunger strikers made to respond to the demands of the IRA. Sinn Féin judged this to be bad British propaganda.
To this day, Bobby Sands is one of the best-known actors in the Irish Republican movement and a figure of great symbolic power. The fact that Sands wrote poems and sad songs, wrote them on cigarette paper and wrapped them in plastic film, which fellow inmates kissed from mouth to mouth over their visitors, contributed to its extraordinary fame. After the hunger strike ended, the IRA documented the fight in prison with two sacks of such notices, which it dumped on Guardian journalist David Beresford .
literature
- Bobby Sands: One day in my life , from the English v. Gabriele Haefs , with a foreword by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Seán MacBride . ISBN 3-89771-953-3
- Bobby Sands: Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song , Dublin, Cork 1982. - Poems and other writings by Bobby Sands
- Denis O'Hearn: Nothing but an unfinished song
- Derek Lundy: Man that God Made Mad
- Tim Pat Coogan: On the Blanket. The H Block Story , Dublin 1980, ISBN 0-907085-01-6
- Andreas Spreier: "Political Prisoners" or "Ordinary Criminals"? The battle of interpretation over Bobby Sands' hunger strike in the context of the Northern Ireland conflict in 1981 . In: Werkstatt Geschichte, vol. 80, 2018.
Movie
The hunger strike of Bobby Sands is the subject of the film Some Mother's Son ( Some Mother's Son led) from 1996. Directed by Terry George , which the screenplay with Jim Sheridan wrote. The actors include a. Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan . The role of Bobby Sands is played by John Lynch .
Another cinematic implementation of the last six weeks in the life of Bobby Sands is the film Hunger by British Steve McQueen from 2008. Sands is played here by Michael Fassbender . The film received the Caméra d'Or (Golden Camera) at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. It was released on August 13, 2009 in Germany.
Web links
- Bobby Sands in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Film review of hunger
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sands, Bobby |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sands, Robert George (full name); Ó Seachnasaigh, Roibeard Gearóid (Irish) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Northern Irish IRA member, hunger striker and MP in the British House of Commons |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 9, 1954 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Belfast , Northern Ireland |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 5th 1981 |
| Place of death | Maze Prison , Northern Ireland |