|  25 years ago this morning, Bobby Sands died after 66 days on hunger strike for political status in Long Kesh, or the Maze Prison.
If you are not Irish republican, the anniversary will likely pass without notice, but to those of us who knew or just know of Bobby, it is a time of sadness and grieving. When I first began posting stories about the hunger strike, it was difficult for me to assimilate all the sorrow from that period. One death would occur followed by another and yet another. The increasing numbers and the accompanying tragedy for the families were overwhelming to think about. It doesn't get any easier as time passes. Mostly,for me,it pervades and shadows much of the year.
Since last year there has also been added an extra burden laid bare by the publishing of Richard O'Rawe's book Blanketmen, wherein he states, as the ex-press officer in the prison at that time, that the Republican prisoners were offered a deal they could have lived with and which they wanted to accept but that the Republican leadership nixed it. Nixed it because the deaths of the hunger strikers were serving to further their political agenda by building sympathy for the party with the nationalist public and others throughout the world. Ultimately 6 more men died on hunger strike, six deaths which O'Rawe says were totally unnecessary, as the prisoners later halted the hunger strike due to family intervention and accepted a deal similar to what they had previously been offered.
Needless to say, many were extraordinarily quick to categorically deny O'Rawe's assertion, including Brendan McFarlane, OC of the provisionals in the Kesh, whom O'Rawe says was in the know with him about the offer. Now, however, Denis Bradley, an ex-priest in Derry and longtime mediating link between the brits and Sinn Féin, has also come out to offer his views which, based on facts as he knows them, agree with O'Rawe.
To think of anyone being callous and calculating enough to use the tortuous extended deaths of 6 young men as a PR ploy to further their own rise to power is enough to make your blood boil - and not only that, but to continue to use their deaths for 25 years. It would be an overwhelming perversion of what Bobby and the other 9 hunger strikers stood for and gave their lives for, which was freedom for the Irish people. But many people would say that for Gerry Adams and company to go into 'devolved' government in the North, still under occupation, is the biggest perversion of all.  |
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