Statue For ‘Marcella’

ON THE EVE of the death of Bobby Sands forty-four years ago tomorrow, a huge number of former prisoners and comrades, and over a thousand republican supporters, gathered at Twinbrook, Belfast, for the unveiling of a statue in honour of Bobby and those who died in the prison hospital. The statue unveiled was based on an image taken by French photographer Gérard Harlay in August 1976 of the first march of the political-status protest movement that would develop into the National Smash H-Block/Armagh Committee. Bobby was indentified in Harlay’s series of photographs only a few years ago.

The main speaker at today’s event was, appropriately, Pat Sheehan who had been the longest then on hunger strike, at fifty-five days, when the hunger strike ended on 3 October, 1981.

Today’s unveiling was chaired by Sinn Féin MLA, Danny Baker from Twinbrook. Also in attendance was Sinn Féin Vice-President Michelle O’Neill, several MPs, TDs and MLAs. The opening song proved to be very evocative and emotional. Bik McFarlane, former blanket man, wrote ‘Song For Marcella’ for his friend and comrade Bobby. Bik died just four months ago.

 

Below we publish Pat Sheehan’s address:

Ar dtús, tá fearadh na fáilte roimh uilig anseo inniú chuig an imeacht tabhachtacht seo. Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabhail leis an coiste agus leis na heagrathóirí as an meid oibre atá déanta acu chun an dealbh seo a fháil agus as an cuireadh le teacht agus labhairt anseo inniú.

Tomorrow, May 5^th, marks the 44^th anniversary of the death of our friend and comrade and one of the great leaders of our struggle Volunteer Bobby Sands, after 66 days on hunger strike in the H Blocks, Long Kesh. Bobby was 27 years old when he died.

Nine other hunger strikers died between then and August 20^th. They were: Frank Hughes, Raymond McCreesh, Patsy O’Hara, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee and Micky Devine.

All of them had been born into and grew up in an Orange state that had been established after partition on the basis of a gerrymandered sectarian headcount aimed at giving unionism a permanent and perpetual majority here in the six counties.

It was a state based on supremacy, institutionalised sectarianism and discrimination, the denial of civil rights and the abuse of human rights.  When the Civil Rights campaign came on to the streets in the late 1960s the state responded with violence and brutality.

That was the political context in which Bobby was growing up. His own family was intimidated and driven from their home in the mainly unionist area of Rathcoole in the early seventies, which was when they moved here to Twinbrook.

Bobby was of a generation that decided enough was enough, it was no longer an option to accept meekly the oppression from the unionist regime and the British government and its military. It was time to fight back.

All of those who died on the hunger strike were witnesses to the brutality of the state they lived in. The attacks on peaceful civil rights marchers; the pogroms of 1969; internment; the torture of prisoners; and British army massacres in Ballymurphy, Derry, Springhill and the New Lodge as well as the sectarian killings of hundreds of innocent nationalists by unionist death squads.

The hunger strikers were exemplars of a generation that believed the only way to bring about political change was by the use of armed struggle. Subsequently, many thousands of young Irish men and women ended up in prison where they asserted their right to be treated as political prisoners.

After a lengthy hunger strike in Crumlin Road Prison in 1972 the British government conceded Special Category Status which was political status in everything but name.

However, within a short space of time after that the British began to role out their criminalisation strategy. They instructed their diplomats throughout the world to portray the conflict in Ireland as some sort of criminal enterprise and they began using terminology and vocabulary associated with criminality when referring to our struggle and the people involved in the struggle.

You see, the British with all their military might could not defeat the IRA. And so they turned their attention to the prisoners, believing they were the soft underbelly of the struggle. They thought if they could force the prisoners to accept criminal status they could then drive a wedge between republicans and the communities from which they came. They thought they would then isolate and marginalise republicans and ultimately defeat our struggle.

The front line of this battle was to be played out in the H-Blocks and Armagh women’s prison which our enemies thought would be the breaker’s yards for Irish republican prisoners of war.

The consequence of this was almost five years of prison protest. First the blanket protest when Kieran Nugent famously told the screws that if they wanted him to wear a prison uniform they would have to nail it to his back. Kieran then lifted a rough blanket to cover his nakedness and keep warm and hence the blanket protest was born. That escalated to the ‘no wash’ protest, and ultimately the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981.

Brutality, beatings, deprivation and humiliation were the order of the day and we were in a situation where we believed the only way to bring it to a head was by having a hunger strike.

Some have asked if there was not an alternative to such a drastic course of action. Believe me, every attempt was made to avoid a second hunger strike. Bobby had been appointed as our Ceannfort/Officer in Command when the first hunger strike began in October 1980. When that ended without a resolution just before Christmas Bobby entered into talks with the prison administration to try to find an honourable settlement to the crisis. He wrote in his prison diary in relation to the second hunger strike,

“Some people may blame me for this hunger strike but I have tried everything to avert it short of surrender.”

Notwithstanding Bobby’s efforts, there was a clear alternative to hunger strike.

The British government could have ended its vicious and vindictive criminalisation strategy and the prison regime could have stopped the beatings, brutality and torture of naked defenceless prisoners.

They didn’t because they thought they could defeat and break us.

They thought we would bend the knee and eventually capitulate to their torture and brutality.

They thought we would accept the criminalisation of our struggle.

Danny Morrison paints the picture vividly in his introduction to the book Hunger Strike. He wrote,

“The British government, the RUC, the courts, the prison administration thought they could criminalise my generation of republican patriots by breaking the prisoners.

They took away their freedom, then their clothes, shoes and socks and locked them up 23 hours a day. Then they took away the walk around the prison yard in fresh air under blue skies. They took away their beds. When this didn’t break them they took away the light that streamed through the windows. They took away the space under the door. They took away music, poetry books and literature, photographs of loved ones, letters home, their visits … their very lives. Leaving them with nothing. Or so they thought.”

But the British hadn’t considered the calibre of the men and women in our ranks. They hadn’t factored into their strategy the centuries of prison resistance that was part of the psyche and DNA of Irish republicans.

Perhaps they should have paid more attention to Bobby’s writings where he frequently made reference to heroes from previous phases of struggle,

“Thomas Clarke is in my thoughts,” he said “and MacSwiney, Stagg, Gaughan, Thomas Ashe, McCaughey.

And even while facing into his own death Bobby’s thoughts turned to comrades who had gone before him. He wrote this about our comrades who had died on hunger strike in the 1970s in English prisons:

“I have come to understand and with each passing day I understand increasingly more and in the most sad way, that awful fate and torture endured to the very bitter end by Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan. Perhaps – indeed yes! I am more fortunate because these poor comrades were without comrades or a friendly face. They had not even the final consolation of dying in their own land.”

Connolly, Pearse, Clarke, Ashe, MacSwiney, Stagg, Gaughan who were all mentioned by Bobby were the unbowed and unbroken republicans who we in the H Blocks and Armagh looked to for inspiration. They were the heroes who we looked up to. We were never going to let them down.

To go on hunger strike is, as you would imagine, a massive decision. It isn’t just a matter of whether you can see it through to the end, you also have to take account of the impact it will have on your family. Bobby highlights this in the very first entry of his prison diary on March 1^st 1981:

“My heart is very sore because I know that I have broken my poor mother’s heart, and my home is struck with unbearable anxiety. But I have 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.”

In light of how the first hunger strike ended in December 1980 most of us in the Blocks believed it was inevitable that someone would die on the second hunger strike.

It is a measure of the man who Bobby Sands was that he decided he would lead the second hunger strike, initially on his own, only to be joined after a two week interval by Frank Hughes. As far as Bobby was concerned if anyone was going to die it was him, but that there would be a two week window in which he hoped the British would move to resolve the situation before others died.

Given the enormity of his decision and face almost certain death many people understandably want to know what gave him the strength? What motivated him, and the others who died in the H Block in 1981?

The best answer, I think, can be found in Bobby’s poem ‘The Rhythm of Time’:

 

‘There’s an inner thing in everyone
Do you know this thing my friend
It lies in the hearts of heroes dead
It screams in tyrants eyes.
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.’

 

That was the thought in my mind when it was my turn to join the hunger strike. I received a small comm wrapped in clingfilm and when I opened it I discovered a handwritten note on two cigarette papers that had been joined together.

The note was addressed to Volunteer Pat Sheehan.

Although my heart was in my mouth because of what I expected to read, I was pleased to see Volunteer in front of my name, because I have always been proud and always will be proud to have been a Volunteer in the Irish Republican Army.

The comm went on to say;

‘You have volunteered to go on hunger strike and have been selected to replace Volunteer Kieran Doherty. By embarking on this course of action you will be bringing the movement into direct confrontation with the enemy, so if you have any second thoughts step aside now and nothing less will be thought of you. However, if you go ahead with your decision you will be dead in two months.’

It was as stark and as blunt as that and it definitely rocked me back on my heels. But that was the reality of what faced all of us going on hunger strike, not least Bobby himself. But Bobby was our leader, he was the first and I’ve no doubt everyone else drew inspiration from his leadership. I know I certainly did.

Bobby also led the way in other areas of the struggle. He was the first republican of our generation to stand for election in the North when he was a candidate in the Westminister by-election in April 1981 while he was on hunger strike.

Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, had asserted that the prisoners had no support and that the IRA had no support. And there was massive pressure brought to bear on the electorate from all quarters not to vote for Bobby. Despite all of that, the people of Fermanagh and South Tyrone came out in their thousands to cast their votes and elected Bobby as a member of the Westminister Parliament. In the process they blew Thatcher’s assertion completely out of the water.

That day, April 9^th 1981, Bobby’s election was the single biggest news story on this planet; an IRA volunteer on hunger strike in prison had been elected by the people.

We got the news by way of radios that had been smuggled into the Blocks. We had been warned, that whatever the result, there was to be no reaction, no shouting or cheering because the screws would then know we had a radio in the wing and begin searching for it.

Everybody in H3 adhered to that order with the exception of Tom McElwee in the other wing who let out an almighty roar that must have been heard the whole way to Bellaghy!

Despite being locked up naked in a seven foot by eight foot concrete cell I can honestly say without equivocation that that was one of the happiest days of my life. When I heard Bobby had won the election I leapt in the air and jumped around that cell punching the air like a man possessed, without a sound coming from my mouth.

The people of Fermanagh South Tyrone had vindicated and validated our right to be recognised as political prisoners.

That was the day it really dawned on me, indeed on all of us in the H Blocks, that we were not alone.

Forty-four years on and looking back I now realise that was the day criminalisation was defeated.

Remember, the rationale of criminalisation was to isolate, marginalise and ultimately defeat our struggle.

So how has that worked out?

The Orange state is gone. Unionist domination is gone.

There are more republicans than ever before and Sinn Féin is the biggest political movement on this island.

Therefore, the opposite of what was intended by the British has come to pass. Not only was criminalisation defeated but the injustice of partition and the role of the British state in Ireland was exposed to international scrutiny as never before.

By their heroism and sacrifice Bobby and the other hunger strikers ensured that the cause of Irish freedom was renewed, and now in 2025 we are closer than ever to undoing the injustice of partition and re-uniting our country.

 

Their bravery set in motion a series of events that makes the momentum for political and social change unstoppable and irreversible.

That momentum will carry us forward to the realisation of an Irish national democracy. A republic where the rights and identity of all our people, of whatever persuasion or background will be accommodated and cherished.

Bobby Sands didn’t die just to prove he was right. He had a vision, a belief and an idea that his suffering and death would lead to a better world for the rest of us.

Today we are in a better place. We no longer need or expect our young men and women to risk their lives and liberty on active service, or to hunger strike in prison cells.

That’s not to say there isn’t work to be done. We need to redouble our efforts and all of us put our shoulders to the wheel. Irish unity is not inevitable, we need to make it happen. It’s then, as Bobby said, we will see the rising of the moon.

Today, forty-four years after his death in the H-Blocks, Bobby Sands’ name lives on. He, is remembered and honoured especially by those living under oppression and struggling for their own freedom.

There is a monument to the hunger strikers in Havana, Cuba. Gerry Adams and I unveiled another in the prison yard, on Robben Island, South Africa. I was invited to speak at the unveiling of a large mural of Bobby in Rome in Italy. There are streets named after Bobby as far away as America, France and Iran. And here today in his own local area we will witness the unveiling of this magnificent statue.

When all of us standing here today are dead and gone and largely forgotten about Bobby Sands will still be remembered. He will remain a beacon of light for freedom loving people everywhere.

Bobby should not be remembered as a hunger striker only. Like all of us he was multi-faceted.

He was the loving father of an eight-year old son. And he was also a loving son and brother.

Bobby was a friend and comrade to many. He was a community activist, particularly here in Twinbrook between his two periods of imprisonment. He was a musician and a song writer, a poet and a prolific writer. He was also a Gaeilgeoir, he loved our native language. Bobby was a Blanketman, a political prisoner of war, a socialist, a leader and a revolutionary.

Bobby was a young man who resisted until his last breath. He was our hunger striker. He is our hero.

I want to finish off now with another quote from Bobby’s diary. It was his part of his entry from March 9^th 1981, his 27^th birthday.

“Well I have gotten by twenty-seven years, so that is something. I may die, but the Republic of 1916 will never die. Onward to the Republic and the liberation of our people.”

Today we salute Volunteer Bobby Sands.

Fuair sé bás ar son Saoirse na hÉireann.