ARCHIVES
Death of Alice McElwee
The Bobby Sands Trust extends sympathy to the family and large family circle of Mrs Alice McElwee following her death in Bellaghy just short of her ninety-sixth birthday. Alice was the mother of IRA Volunteer Thomas McElwee who died on 8 August, 1981, after sixty-two...
1980 Remembered
Raymond McCartney and Mary Doyle were two of many republican prisoners who went on hunger strike in the autumn of 1980 demanding the return of political status which the British Government had arbitrarily withdrawn. In this video they outline events from forty years...
Death of Eugene McCabe
The death has occurred of writer, playwright, and pacifist Eugene McCabe (90). Eugene’s trilogy of plays on the differing traditions in the conflict was titled Victims and was filmed by RTÉ. About it he said: “The overall theme is, of course, the futility of violence....
39th Anniversaries Marked
Today is the 39th anniversary of the death of Micky Devine, the tenth and last man to die on the 1981 hunger strike. Below are a number of links to events held throughout this year (mostly online as a result of the Corona Virus pandemic) to commemorate the hunger...
Thirty Nine Years
Today marks the thirty-ninth anniversary of the death on hunger strike of IRA Volunteer, Bobby Sands MP. Regardless of the passage of time the 1981 hunger strike in which ten young men laid down their lives over seven-months increases in historical significance and in...
Death of Lily Fitzsimons
Well-known republican activist Belfast’s Lily Fitzsimons has died after a long illness. Lily was born in North Belfast in 1937 and lived in the city throughout her life, moving to the west of the city after she married. She joined with the women of Andersonstown and...
Francie Brolly – A Great Irish Patriot
The death has occurred of leading republican Francie Brolly, a civil rights activist, a former prisoner, singer and songwriter, and for seven years until 2010 Sinn Féin MLA for East Derry. Only last August Francie, along with his wife Anne, attended the relaunch of...
Comrades In The Dark
Two years ago the Bobby Sands Trust received an email from a young woman called Caitlin Barnett, an emerging UK choreographer based in London. She told us about a new contemporary dance piece her company had performed in 2016, as part of the Resolution festival for...
‘This was the battlefield…’
Writer and playwright Phil Mac Giolla Bháin reviews Hunger Strike - Reflections (now in its third print since its release last August). The book is available through Easons, Waterstones, most independent bookshops and can be ordered online here -oo0oo- IT IS MY...
Photos of Bobby Sands Discovered!
Incredible photographs of Bobby Sands from August 1976, possibly the last taken of him before his arrest weeks later, have been discovered in the archive of French photographer Gérard Harlay. Gérard covered the conflict between 1972 and 1976 and last March donated his...
