Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
The anniversary on Sunday of the death on hunger strike of IRA Volunteer Bobby Sands was marked with a number of posts on social media. I would like to add an Irish migrant’s1 perspective and some analysis of his legacy.
The Irish diaspora was a powerful sector in solidarity for the Irish struggle not only because of their cultural background but also because of their numbers. Some British cities had an estimated diaspora population of 10% (Irish-born and 1st and 2nd generations).
Furthermore, the higher proportion of those in turn was of the working class, a section of society which, although they in no way had their hands on the standard levers of power, certainly had a strong potential of the kind the British ruling class had learned to fear.
Irish Republicans of course formed part of that sector and organised within it but on the other hand the IRA’s bombing campaign in Britain was of no help at all. The popular fear of being caught in an explosion greatly enabled the Government to tighten the screws under the guise of “security”.
Karl Marx, a strong supporter of Irish freedom had commented after the Clerkenwell prison bombing of 18672 that “One cannot expect the London proletarians to allow themselves to be blown up in honour of the Fenian emissaries” (i.e who they were trying to free from the jail).
In 1974 the Labour Government had repressive legislation ready and on 29 November, using hysteria arising from the Birmingham and Guildford pub-bombings they rushed through the Prevention of Terrorism Act (1974) which permitted the holding of suspects for two days without charge.
That could be extended for another five days – and often enough was — by application to the Home Secretary. Access to solicitor was usually denied and though not lawful, the fact of the detention itself was often denied to concerned people making enquiries of the police station.
The prospect of disappearing for seven days into police custody somewhere was naturally terrifying and a ‘suspect’ could also be deported without trial to Ireland – even to the British colony of the Six Counties, which amounted according to their law to “internal exile”.
The framing of a score of innocent Irish people3 in five different trials4 with very heavy sentences added to the intended terrorising of the Irish community in Britain, the “suspect community”5, many of whom believed the victims to be not only innocent but most not even politically active.6
Irish solidarity activity in Britain diminished greatly after 1974 as state repression impacted across the Irish community. But the hunger strikes and concerns to save the lives of the strikers in 1981 broke the hold of state terror as people took to the streets in their thousands once again.
They were unsuccessful but never returned to that state of immobilising fear that had settled over the community.
The Irish in Britain Representation Group got its initial start in 1981 which happened as follows: the bourgeois Federation of Irish Societies had its AGM in May 1981 and one of the members proposed that a motion of sympathy to the Sands family be recorded when he died.
The meeting’s Chairperson ruled the proposal out of order and ‘the Fed’ continued with their ordinary business. The then Editor of the Irish Post7, writing in his “Dolan” column, found this disturbing and suggested there might be a need for a new type of Irish community association.
A number of individuals wrote in and the ball got rolling, though it took until 1983 to set up the branch-based organisation with a constitution and democratic safeguards in operational rules. The IBRG soon had a number of branches in London and others in the North and Midlands.
For the next two decades the organisation campaigned for the release of the framed prisoners, against the Prevention of Terrorism Act, strip-searching, all racism but in particular the anti-Irish and anti-Traveller varieties, for Irish representation in education, services, Census category, etc.
The IBRG also called for British departure from Ireland and collaborated with other organisations in marches, demonstration, pickets, conferences, producing also a number of important report documents. The organisation’s officers were drawn from migrant Irish and those born in Britain.
THE LARK8 – a poem
Last night, from afar, I watched the Lark die
and inside me, began to cry,
and outside, a little too.
There’s nothing more that can now be done,
to save the life of this toilers’ son;
another martyr – Bobby, adieu.
Imperialism takes once more its toll,
another name joins the martyrs’ roll
and a knife of sadness runs us through.
But sorrow we must watch,
for it can still,
yes, it can kill
the song that Bobby listened to.
And if his death be not in vain,
let’s fuel our anger with the pain
and raise the fallen sword anew;
and this sword to us bequeathed:
let its blade be never sheathed
’till all our foes be ground to dust
and their machines naught but rust ….
Then will the servant be the master
and our widening horizons ever-vaster
and our debt
to Bobby
paid
as due.
(D.Breatnach, May 1981, London)
REPRESENTATION OF BOBBY SANDS
Bobby Sands was a man of great courage whose leadership qualities were recognised by his fellow political prisoners when they elected him as their Officer Commanding in the H-Blocks. He was also an accomplished writer and poet.
When the British reneged on the agreement that ended the 1980 hunger strike and a new one was planned, Sands insisted on being first on the list, which also meant that in the event of resulting deaths, his would be the earliest.
Most people will agree easily with all the above evaluation of the man but from that point onwards, his representation is manipulated to suit different agendas, in particular those of pacifists, social democrats, liberals and a variety of opportunists.
Some of them love above all his quotation that “Our revenge shall be the laughter of our children”. They forget many other things he wrote and seek to turn him into an angel or saint of pacifism.
Since they embraced the pacification process, Sinn Féin try to represent Sands as an advocate for and proof of the effectiveness of participating in the parliamentary electoral system, based on his success in a 1981 Westminster by-election with 30,492 votes, 51.2% of the total of valid votes.
What both these groups fail to recognise is that Sands was an IRA volunteer and was sentenced for possession of handguns in 1972 and again in 1976. If he was an angel, it was of the Archangel type, fighting against what he considered evil.
He was proposed in the Fermanagh-South Tyrone by-election mainly in order to support the campaign of the prisoners against criminalisation and for the political status recognition that they had previously. Saving the lives of the hunger strikers was of course part of the plan too.
Nine protesting Republican prisoners contested the general election in the Irish State in June. Kieran Doherty and Paddy Agnew (who was not on hunger strike) were elected in Cavan-Monaghan and Louth respectively, and Joe McDonnell narrowly missed election in Sligo-Leitrim.
But that is a long way from proving that the electoral process is a viable way of dislodging the ruling class and their system and, in fact, history has proven the opposite.
Nobody knows what position Sands and the other nine would have taken on the electoral process had they lived. Possibly some would have gone along with the SF leadership on that and some others would now be reviled as “dissidents” (as are indeed some H-Block survivors).
All we can say for certain is that they were men of courage in that all of them had joined the armed struggle for Irish national liberation. They had even higher courage of a level hard to imagine, to risk and then experience slow physical disintegration and death by the day and by the hour.
Long after their erstwhile prominent enemies are forgotten, their names will shine in our history and Bobby Sands’s, the brightest of them all.
End.
FOOTNOTES
1At the time I was living and working in England.
2A bomb was planted against the prison wall to free a member of their group who was being held on remand awaiting trial at Clerkenwell Prison, London. The explosion damaged nearby houses, killed 12 civilians and wounded 120; no prisoners escaped and the attack was a failure. Michael Barrett was found guilty of the bombing despite his claim supported by witness testimony of having been in Glasgow during the bombing and was hanged on Tuesday 26 May 1868 outside Newgate Prison, the last man to be publicly hanged in England (the practice was ended from 29 May 1868 by the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerkenwell_explosion.
3Carole Richardson of the Guildford Four was not Irish but she was the girlfriend of one of three Irishmen.
4Birmingham Six, Guidford Four, Giuseppe Conlon, Maguire Seven and Judith Ward. They were not acquitted and released until decades later, by which time Giuseppe Conlon had died in jail.
5Suspect Community by Paddy Hillyard, Pluto Press (1993)
6Believing them innocent and not active worked even better to terrorise because if the likes of those could be framed and jailed, no-one was safe. But perhaps safest was to do absolutely nothing to draw the attention of the State.
7Brendán Mac Lua, co-founder of the Irish community newspaper in 1970 which is now a very different periodical.
8The lark is associated with Sands because he wrote a story about a man who had captured a skylark, a bird that unusually sings in flight. In the cage the bird would not sing so the man draped the cage with cloth and still the bird would not sing, nor would it do so when he refused it food and water until eventually, it died in the dark, silent to the last.
REFERENCES
Powers under the Prevention of Terrorism Act: https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/hmso/pta1974.htm
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