Bobby Sand death anniversary today

Joey the lips

Today is the anniversary of the death of boby sands. i believe his contrabution to irish politics has been far wide reaching than any campagn that he would have been involved in, As this is a political discussion thread anybody any views on his and the death of the 10 hunger strikers contrabution to politics in ireland. Bearing in mind it was Margret thatcher who was in power at the time its worth reflecting that the "belief" to their cause has far outweighed anything thatcher has achieved

(and poetry)

http://www.bobbysandstrust.com/

The Rhythm Of Time
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!’

futurehope

My immediate reaction would be to suggest that if Sands and his colleagues had stuck to poetry then there'd have been less women and children scraped up of the roads of Ulster into plastic bags.

I wonder how Bobby would have felt about starving himself to death so Marty could become a Crown minister in an Ulster assembly firmly fixed within The UK? A responsibility sharing executive that was available in 1973, as designed by The SDLP.

Above all, I wonder how he'd have felt if he'd known that four of his fellow hunger strikers were left to die by an outside IRA leadership when a deal had already been made with The UK state that was acceptable to the strikers themselves?

Joey the lips

futurehope wrote: »

My immediate reaction would be to suggest that if Sands and his colleagues had stuck to poetry then there'd have been less women and children scraped up of the roads of Ulster into plastic bags.

I wonder how Bobby would have felt about starving himself to death so Marty could become a Crown minister in an Ulster assembly firmly fixed within The UK? A responsibility sharing executive that was available in 1973, as designed by The SDLP.

Above all, I wonder how he'd have felt if he'd known that four of his fellow hunger strikers were left to die by an outside IRA leadership when a deal had already been made with The UK state that was acceptable to the strikers themselves?

Explain this a little more please for myself anyway! you have me curious!

Can'tseeme

Who's to know what Bobby Sands would feel about the current arrangement. Things are only relevant to there time and at that time the north was a horrible sectarian hell hole to live in for a nationalist/republican. You just have to look at the UWC strike to see attitudes of that era towards nationalists and powersharing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Workers%27_Council_strike

Would recommend anyone to watch the film Hunger. Doesn't deal so much with the politics of the situation, more the human turmoil he went through.

jimmmy

Can'tseeme wrote: »

Who's to know what Bobby Sands would feel about the current arrangement.

True enough, but as someone else wrote " if Sands and his colleagues had stuck to poetry then there'd have been less women and children scraped up of the roads of Ulster into plastic bags."

Can'tseeme

jimmmy wrote: »

True enough, but as someone else wrote " if Sands and his colleagues had stuck to poetry then there'd have been less women and children scraped up of the roads of Ulster into plastic bags."

...and if the north wasn't a bitter sectarian hell hole for nationalists, we may not have seen young men and women flooding the ranks of the IRA. We could go on all day jimmmy...

jimmmy

It does not matter...as another poster wrote if Sands and his colleagues had stuck to poetry then there'd have been less women and children scraped up of the roads of Ulster into plastic bags.

Deedsie

jimmmy wrote: »

It does not matter...as another poster wrote if Sands and his colleagues had stuck to poetry then there'd have been less women and children scraped up of the roads of Ulster into plastic bags.

...and if the north wasn't a bitter sectarian hell hole for nationalists, we may not have seen young men and women flooding the ranks of the IRA.

jimmmy

Not all nationalists "flooded" in to the ranks of the IRA...and nobody forced anyone to join the IRA, UVF, or whoever. Anyway this could be debated on and on...and I am not going to.

Nodin

jimmmy wrote: »

Not all nationalists "flooded" in to the ranks of the IRA...and nobody forced anyone to join the IRA, UVF, or whoever. Anyway this could be debated on and on...and I am not going to.

Seeing as two of your posts on the subject are actually composed of some one elses, I can only salute your decision.

turgon

This thread is going to achieve nothing accept descend into the usual "I hate the Brits" rant anti-rant crap that starts every time someone opens a thread relating to Northern Ireland.

I look forward to the day when Northern issues will be able to be debated without all the nonsense. I will probably be a very very old man by then.

celticfan32

Bobby Sands and his fellow comrades were great Irish men and thoroughly deserve their place in history. They believed Ireland should have its freedom from the greedy enemy and they laid down their lives for the cause of Irish freedom. Someday soon, their efforts and the efforts of all our republican comrades will bear fruitition and we will have a united Ireland once and for all !!!

futurehope

Can'tseeme said:

Who's to know what Bobby Sands would feel about the current arrangement. Things are only relevant to there time and at that time the north was a horrible sectarian hell hole to live in for a nationalist/republican.

Made far, far worse by the likes of Bobby Sands. If you'd asked the average Catholic in say 1976 would he like to go back to 1966, he'd have bitten your hand off.

You just have to look at the UWC strike to see attitudes of that era towards nationalists and powersharing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Workers%27_Council_strike

And if The IRA had agreed to call off their campaign and destroy all their weapons as part of the deal - who knows what would have followed. But they didn't did they? They took another twenty odd years.

futurehope

celticfan32 wrote: »

Bobby Sands and his fellow comrades were great Irish men and thoroughly deserve their place in history. They believed Ireland should have its freedom from the greedy enemy and they laid down their lives for the cause of Irish freedom. Someday soon, their efforts and the efforts of all our republican comrades will bear fruitition and we will have a united Ireland once and for all !!!

I thought they laid down their lives for the 'five demands', but it's safe to say the real outcome was to boost support for SFs electoral adventures - maybe that's why they needed ten dead instead of six.

I personally find it hard to believe that the ten hunger strikers would have signed up to The Belfast Agreement, but who's to know? Perhaps they'd have joined the ranks of those suckered by Adams and his celebrity revolutionaries.

Soldie

celticfan32 wrote: »

Bobby Sands and his fellow comrades were great Irish men and thoroughly deserve their place in history. They believed Ireland should have its freedom from the greedy enemy and they laid down their lives for the cause of Irish freedom. Someday soon, their efforts and the efforts of all our republican comrades will bear fruitition and we will have a united Ireland once and for all !!!

:rolleyes:

marco murphy

R.I.P.


In 1803 we sailed out to sea
Out from the sweet town of Derry
For Australia bound if we didn’t all drown
And the marks of our fetters we carried.

In the rusty iron chains we sighed for our wains
As our good wives we left in sorrow.
As the mainsails unfurled our curses we hurled
On the English and thoughts of tomorrow.

Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.
Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.

I cursed them to hell as our bow fought the swell.
Our ship danced like a moth in the firelights.
White horses rode high as the devil passed by
Taking souls to Hades by twilight.

Five weeks out to sea we were now forty-three
Our comrades we buried each morning.
In our own slime we were lost in a time.
Endless night without dawning.

Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.
Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.

Van Dieman’s land is a hell for a man
To live out his life in slavery.
When the climate is raw and the gun makes the law.
Neither wind nor rain cares for bravery.

Twenty years have gone by and I’ve ended me bond
And comrades’ ghosts are behind me.
A rebel I came and I’ll die the same.
On the cold winds of night you will find me

Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry.
Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-Lhlx8uBA&feature=related

Joey the lips

jimmmy wrote: »

It does not matter...as another poster wrote if Sands and his colleagues had stuck to poetry then there'd have been less women and children scraped up of the roads of Ulster into plastic bags.

Deedsie wrote: »

...and if the north wasn't a bitter sectarian hell hole for nationalists, we may not have seen young men and women flooding the ranks of the IRA.

Good one Deedsie I noticed he said the same thing twice obv so did you. Any more thoughts on the second post anybody?

It has me curious?

turgon

futurehope wrote: »

I wonder how Bobby would have felt about starving himself to death so Marty could become a Crown minister in an Ulster assembly firmly fixed within The UK? A responsibility sharing executive that was available in 1973, as designed by The SDLP.

Futurehope is saying that the IRA at the time refused to engage with the power sharing executive as set up by the Sunningdale Agreement, yet 25 years and many many deaths later they eventually did just that.

"Marty" being Martin McGuiness I assume.

futurehope wrote: »

Above all, I wonder how he'd have felt if he'd known that four of his fellow hunger strikers were left to die by an outside IRA leadership when a deal had already been made with The UK state that was acceptable to the strikers themselves?

Not too sure about this, but I assume by the time the UK did offer the "deal", the four hunger strikers werent in a position to examine it.

Serenity Now!

Can'tseeme wrote: »

Would recommend anyone to watch the film Hunger. Doesn't deal so much with the politics of the situation, more the human turmoil he went through.

You should also warn of the sheer tedium of watching someone bleach and sweep a corridor from beginning to end. Riveting stuff indeed.

sFitz

celticfan32 wrote: »

Bobby Sands and his fellow comrades were great Irish men and thoroughly deserve their place in history. They believed Ireland should have its freedom from the greedy enemy and they laid down their lives for the cause of Irish freedom. Someday soon, their efforts and the efforts of all our republican comrades will bear fruitition and we will have a united Ireland once and for all !!!

Can I please ask you, what do Celtic football (English game btw) club have to do with Irish Republicanism?. I'm sure that Bobby sands and all true Republicans didn't give a sh*t about this Celtic vs Rangers, protestant vs catholic bullsh*t.

junder

Can'tseeme wrote: »

...and if the north wasn't a bitter sectarian hell hole for nationalists, we may not have seen young men and women flooding the ranks of the IRA. We could go on all day jimmmy...

and if the provies were not blowing people up etc etc yes we could go on all day. Personely i will be commerating bobby sands death with a large slap up meal. "Would you like a pasty supper booby sands".

Victor

celticfan32 wrote: »

Who mentioned anything about Celtic v Rangers you knob !!!!

Your nick?

celticfan32 wrote: »

England are nothing but a greedy dirty nation who thought they could colonise every country that they invaded, Thank God the provos gave them everything that was due to the animals down through the years !!!! Bobby Sands is remembered all over the world and even has streets named aftr him. England will always be scum to people all over this planet !!!

Yes, very scummy.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0461136/

galwayrush

The people who want peace have moved on , it's 2009 now.:rolleyes:

Madworld

Bobby Sands, Sinn Féin, PIRA, CIRA, RIRA, INLA = scum

Murderers, bombers and then some of the time they didnt even have the guts to do the bombing themselves. Instead they strapped up innocent cooks into cars and forced them to drive into the Briitish army. Cowardous Scumbags

Driseog

I bet most of the people able to ride the high horse of moral sensibility never faced descrimination on a daily basis by a state who's sole purpose was to look after one section of society only and to deminish the rights of the other side. Never had family members harrassed and assaulted at the hands of what were supposed to be the police force of fair law and never were burned out of their homes by loyalist mobs who wanted to banish Irish catholics, nationalists and republicans from the face of the planet. Most men of violence were a product of their environment and if a state treats sections of a society with utter contempt then why is any body with a rational brain surprised that the result is violence and misery. The hunger strikes lead to Sinn Fein increasing their political support and the rise of Sinn Fein lead to the eventual decommisioning of the IRA and the relative peace there is today even though I doubt that was what was in mind at the time.
R.I.P. Bobby Sands

Madworld

so that excuses those terrorists killing 621 people. 48.5% of all the killings during the troubles were killed by the IRA. Btw where you grow up is no excuse for ur actions. i v relations from the Fatima Mansions. They would tell you the same

junder

Driseog wrote: »

I bet most of the people able to ride the high horse of moral sensibility never faced descrimination on a daily basis by a state who's sole purpose was to look after one section of society only and to deminish the rights of the other side. Never had family members harrassed and assaulted at the hands of what were supposed to be the police force of fair law and never were burned out of their homes by loyalist mobs who wanted to banish Irish catholics, nationalists and republicans from the face of the planet. Most men of violence were a product of their environment and if a state treats sections of a society with utter contempt then why is any body with a rational brain surprised that the result is violence and misery. The hunger strikes lead to Sinn Fein increasing their political support and the rise of Sinn Fein lead to the eventual decommisioning of the IRA and the relative peace there is today even though I doubt that was what was in mind at the time.
R.I.P. Bobby Sands

did you witness it?

Erin Go Brath

celticfan32 wrote: »

Bobby Sands and his fellow comrades were great Irish men and thoroughly deserve their place in history. They believed Ireland should have its freedom from the greedy enemy and they laid down their lives for the cause of Irish freedom. Someday soon, their efforts and the efforts of all our republican comrades will bear fruitition and we will have a united Ireland once and for all !!!

Amen to that a chara! RIP to that brave soldier Bobby and all his fallen comrades! Shame on all the snivellers on this forum who don't have a fraction of the moral courage of the hunger strikers but feel compelled to denigrate these brave men at every opportunity.

Erin Go Brath

junder wrote: »

and if the provies were not blowing people up etc etc yes we could go on all day. Personely i will be commerating bobby sands death with a large slap up meal. "Would you like a pasty supper booby sands".

Your quite the classy guy!

Joey the lips

turgon wrote: »

Futurehope is saying that the IRA at the time refused to engage with the power sharing executive as set up by the Sunningdale Agreement, yet 25 years and many many deaths later they eventually did just that.

"Marty" being Martin McGuiness I assume.



Not too sure about this, but I assume by the time the UK did offer the "deal", the four hunger strikers werent in a position to examine it.

Thats interesting history blames the unionists not the IRA???

It was eventually agreed that the executive functions of the Council would be limited to "tourism, conservation, and aspects of animal health", but this did not reassure the unionists, who saw any influence by the Republic over Northern affairs as a step closer to a united Ireland. They saw their fears confirmed when SDLP councillor Hugh Logue publicly described the Council of Ireland as "the vehicle that would trundle unionists into a united Ireland" in a speech at Trinity College, Dublin. [2] On 10 December, the day after the agreement was announced, loyalist paramilitaries formed the Ulster Army Council — a coalition of loyalist paramilitary groups, including the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force, which would oppose the agreement.
In January 1974, the Ulster Unionist Party narrowly voted against continued participation in the Assembly and Faulkner resigned as leader, to be succeeded by the anti-Sunningdale Harry West. The following month a general election took place. The Ulster Unionists formed the United Ulster Unionist Council (UUUC) as a coalition of anti-agreement unionists with the Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party to stand a single anti-Sunningdale candidate in each constituency. The pro-Sunningdale parties, the SDLP, the Alliance, the Northern Ireland Labour Party and the "Pro Assembly Unionists" made up of Faulkner's supporters, were disunited and ran candidates against one another. When the results were declared, the UUUC had captured eleven of the twelve constituencies, several of which had been won on split votes. Only West Belfast returned a pro-Sunningdale MP. The UUUC declared that this represented a democratic rejection of the Sunningdale Assembly and Executive, and sought to bring them down by any means possible.
In March 1974, pro-agreement unionists withdrew their support for the agreement, calling for the Republic of Ireland to remove the Articles 2 and 3 of its constitution first (these Articles would not be revised until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998).

Is it not fair to say the real failure was in unionists not accepting articles 2 & 3 of the irish constitution rather than assuming it was the IRA??

Anyway is this just an attemp to divert from the real effect of bobby sands by people that are not interested or pro union support which has no chance of ever talking positive about sands

Article available on Wikipedia for you to view

Joey the lips

It would be nice to get real political discussion on Bobby sands instead of attacking the IRA. The own irish govt approch to the troubles was in effect condoning the IRA's actions, the gun running to the sdlp just in case you forgot. In way the innocent always suffer but on the other side how long would have the shankill butchers gone on????

Can this discussion not be kept on topic of bobby sands just to bring it back from rantings

The veteran Canadian writer and director "http://www.filmreferencelibrary.ca/index.asp? Peter Pearson has reviewed ‘Hunger’ on his site http://peterspovblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/entrancing-legerdemain.html" blog and makes some comparisons between Che Guevara and Bobby Sands. Here is his review in full:
Coming out of last night’s sneak of Hunger, which 26 of us attended thanks to Equinoxe’s Brigitte Tanguay, the overwhelming response of our grim-faced crowd was ‘Tough’. Agreed. At least two members couldn’t take it and quit early in the first act. Hunger is one grueling film to watch, feces smeared over cell walls, pervasive cudgel-beatings, soulless debasements. I cannot recall a movie more grim. Nor more dazzling. And so while composing my response to our crowd’s response, I dawdled over this morning’s NYT. Here’s a report from today’s paper on interrogation techniques, utilized by the CIA: In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail — like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears. The interrogation methods were authorized beginning in 2002, and some were used as late as 2005 in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons. The techniques were among the Bush administration’s most closely guarded secrets, and the documents released Thursday afternoon were the most comprehensive public accounting to date of the program. Which of course raises the question: do we, public-minded citizens need to know what happened in the Lamaze prison to those IRA prisoners in the 1980s? Similarly, can’t we just gloss over waterboarding, sleep-deprivation, debasement and degradation those Iraqis suffered in Abu Griab? Do we need to know it in such detail? Do we need to see the video? In Hunger, as in Iraq, the prisoners fight for their dignity.
My initial response to Hunger, which I dared not say aloud last night, was: It’s only a movie. Movies are all shot the same - lights, camera, make-up, action. Doesn’t matter whether it’s the Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Sound of Music. Same cumbersome technology, shot by shot, until the movie is done. Of course hardened veterans of my-pov.ca and MILR all know this. But it the entrancing legerdemain of moviemakers that gets us every time. Hunger director, Steve McQueen is a visual artist. This is his first movie and he beguiles us that those sets, costumes, actors are real bed sores, feces-splattered walls, fetid cells. And yet, McQueen’s scenes were for the most part, less grim than any average Hollywood guns-and-fireballs epic. We just believed the bloodied knuckles of Hunger’s prison guards more.
We believed those actors were being put through the real thing, because we saw their real naked bodies, with their real naked genitals, we heard the real steely, patronizing voice of Maggie Thatcher (with the same dispassionate patronizing indifference of Dick Cheney), and we thought, hands-slapped to our cheeks, My gawd? Steve McQueen persuaded us, engaged our eyes, our emotions, our heads, our hearts. This is what happened! Brits behaving like Nazis. They stirred deep thoughts within us. But these weren’t Nazis. They were our own kind with a capacity for behaving like Nazis. McQueen convinced us this movie was not a movie. It was the real thing.
I had a couple of other idle thoughts about Hunger. First, as in The Reader, we are seeing abundant unairbrushed nakedness in movies these days. No longer the cutesy peek-a-boo angles. In The Reader, moviestar Kate Winslett is onscreen for much of the first act without a stitch on, her nakedness worn as an essential costume. Same as in the Hunger, where IRA prisoner brutalization necessitated unrelieved male nakedness, surely disturbing to some moviegoers. And here’s my last thought: in the last two months, we’ve seen Che and now Hunger, two historical recreations that focussed on the martyrdom deaths of two 20th Century iconic figures: Che Guevara and Bobby Sands. They may not be Roman Catholic Church martyrs, although both were born Roman Catholic. And in both movies, priests play roles in the story. In Hunger is a spectacular 22 minute locked-off wide shot conversation between Bobby Sands and his priest. The camera does not move. Today Che Guevara and Bobby Sands certainly are martyrs for tens of millions, sealing their their commitment to help others with their lives. Neither however can expect canonization any time soon I suspect. The Catholic Church is otherwise distracted, canonizing Pius the XII, the pope that looked the other way as Jews were deported from Italy, investing yet another silk-swathed Cardinal in New York, and settling tens of thousands of lawsuits, brought by priestly molestations.