0:00:02 > 0:00:05This programme contains some strong language
0:00:05 > 0:00:12This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting
0:00:12 > 0:00:16The conflicts in Northern Ireland seemed to be just going on and on
0:00:16 > 0:00:21in a relentless cycle of violence, and then suddenly, in 1981,
0:00:21 > 0:00:25it took the strangest, darkest, most dramatic twist
0:00:25 > 0:00:29when Bobby Sands and nine of his young comrades,
0:00:29 > 0:00:32insisting they be recognised as political prisoners,
0:00:32 > 0:00:34went on hunger strike.
0:00:45 > 0:00:49This was drama at the absolute rawest edge
0:00:49 > 0:00:51that it could possibly be.
0:00:53 > 0:00:56Because for everybody, it was like there was this clock ticking
0:00:56 > 0:00:58in people's heads. There was a sense this wasn't a game.
0:01:01 > 0:01:04I think it was a very, very difficult process for most people,
0:01:04 > 0:01:06and if Bobby Sands did nothing else,
0:01:06 > 0:01:08he broke through the mental partition.
0:01:08 > 0:01:11I mean, it meant that everybody had to pay attention to it
0:01:11 > 0:01:14and I don't think there's anybody on the islands,
0:01:14 > 0:01:18from whatever perspective, who lived through that time,
0:01:18 > 0:01:21who is not in some way marked by it personally.
0:01:21 > 0:01:24We interrupt our regular programme schedule to bring you
0:01:24 > 0:01:27the following special report from ABC News Washington.
0:01:27 > 0:01:29Here is Ted Koppel.
0:01:29 > 0:01:31Bobby Sands is dead.
0:01:31 > 0:01:34The 27-year-old member of the Irish Republican Army,
0:01:34 > 0:01:38who went on a protest hunger strike 66 days ago, has died.
0:01:38 > 0:01:42Sands, who was serving a 14-year prison term on a weapons possession
0:01:42 > 0:01:46charge, had been demanding special status as a political prisoner.
0:01:46 > 0:01:48A number of other Irish Republican Army members
0:01:48 > 0:01:50also imprisoned by the British
0:01:50 > 0:01:53had joined Sands in his protest, and several of them
0:01:53 > 0:01:56are also well into a hunger strike.
0:02:50 > 0:02:52What he did and what he is known for
0:02:52 > 0:02:56is the most individual thing anybody could possibly do.
0:02:56 > 0:03:01What more personal thing could you do than use your own body
0:03:01 > 0:03:04in the way that he did?
0:03:04 > 0:03:09This is about the most intimate kind of pain,
0:03:09 > 0:03:15and yet, very quickly, that intimacy, that personality,
0:03:15 > 0:03:22that sense of one's self is taken away and is turned into a slogan -
0:03:22 > 0:03:24a brand.
0:03:32 > 0:03:34A perfect icon needs to be
0:03:34 > 0:03:40poised somewhere between knowledge and vast ignorance.
0:03:40 > 0:03:42And what we get with Sands, is we get enough knowledge that we can
0:03:42 > 0:03:47identify with him as a person, but also, you know, he's so young,
0:03:47 > 0:03:49there's so little, really, of his life,
0:03:49 > 0:03:54that you could fill in all those blanks in any way that you want.
0:03:55 > 0:03:58But that's just the way mythology works.
0:04:03 > 0:04:06I'm standing on the threshold of another trembling world.
0:04:06 > 0:04:08May God have mercy on my soul.
0:04:30 > 0:04:33The march through West Belfast was the first major test of
0:04:33 > 0:04:36public support for this second Republican hunger strike, which has
0:04:36 > 0:04:39started against a background far more bitter than the first.
0:04:39 > 0:04:43So far, only one prisoner, Bobby Sands, has refused food.
0:04:43 > 0:04:47Chosen, apparently, because Sands is felt to be a particularly hard man,
0:04:47 > 0:04:49ready to face death alone.
0:04:58 > 0:05:02My heart is very sore because I know I've broken my poor mother's heart,
0:05:02 > 0:05:05and my home is struck with unbearable anxiety.
0:05:07 > 0:05:10But I've considered all the arguments and tried every means
0:05:10 > 0:05:13to avoid what has become the unavoidable.
0:05:13 > 0:05:15It has been forced upon me and my comrades
0:05:15 > 0:05:18by four and a half years of stark inhumanity.
0:05:24 > 0:05:27I am a political prisoner.
0:05:27 > 0:05:31I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war
0:05:31 > 0:05:35that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien,
0:05:35 > 0:05:40oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.
0:06:42 > 0:06:44The Star of the Sea football club
0:06:44 > 0:06:47was several miles from where I was living in Rathcoole.
0:06:47 > 0:06:49We had no proper football team in Rathcoole
0:06:49 > 0:06:50for the size of the estate,
0:06:50 > 0:06:53which at that time was supposed to be the biggest in Europe.
0:06:53 > 0:06:56But there was no organised football team for the kids.
0:06:56 > 0:07:00To us, it wasn't a Catholic football club, it wasn't a Protestant -
0:07:00 > 0:07:04it was a football club, and they looked after one another.
0:07:04 > 0:07:08We played at Celtic Park in a cup final and we beat them five.
0:07:08 > 0:07:13But when the whistle went, it was like a free-for-all on the pitch.
0:07:13 > 0:07:15And I remember Sandsy with his boot off,
0:07:15 > 0:07:17hitting somebody over the head with his boot, you know?
0:07:19 > 0:07:23The Star of the Sea was something which was genuinely cross community.
0:07:23 > 0:07:25You didn't know it was cross community, you didn't even think it.
0:07:25 > 0:07:28Obviously, it had to come apart. It couldn't have survived in the '70s.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30Just wasn't going to happen.
0:07:37 > 0:07:41Gradually, the Protestant guys sort of drifted away.
0:07:41 > 0:07:44People were being drawn back into their two communities at that stage,
0:07:44 > 0:07:46over those years.
0:07:46 > 0:07:47DISTANT LAUGHTER
0:07:51 > 0:07:53We had great days, so we had.
0:07:55 > 0:07:58The Troubles then really started happening in Rathcoole.
0:07:58 > 0:08:01Catholic families were being driven out of their homes.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07At times, I tried to stick up for families,
0:08:07 > 0:08:10because some of those families were good friends of mine, their sons.
0:08:12 > 0:08:15And then we seen Bobby Sands forced to leave Rathcoole.
0:08:26 > 0:08:29I've received several notes from my family and friends.
0:08:29 > 0:08:32I have only read the one from my mother.
0:08:32 > 0:08:37It was what I needed. She has regained her fighting spirit.
0:08:37 > 0:08:39I am happy now.
0:08:44 > 0:08:47From my earliest years, I recall my mother speaking of
0:08:47 > 0:08:50the troubled times that occurred during her childhood.
0:08:50 > 0:08:54Often she spoke of internment on ships, of gun attacks and death.
0:08:55 > 0:08:58And of early morning raids when one lay listening with pounding heart
0:08:58 > 0:09:01to the heavy clattering of boots on the cobblestoned streets.
0:09:03 > 0:09:05When the television arrived,
0:09:05 > 0:09:09Mother's stories were replaced by what it had to offer.
0:09:09 > 0:09:12I became more confused as the baddies in my mother's tales
0:09:12 > 0:09:14were also the heroes on TV.
0:09:15 > 0:09:18The British Army always fought for the right side
0:09:18 > 0:09:20and the police were always the good guys.
0:09:22 > 0:09:25Then came 1968, and my life began to change.
0:09:26 > 0:09:29Regularly, I noticed the specials attacking and baton-charging
0:09:29 > 0:09:32the crowds of people who all of a sudden began marching on streets.
0:09:33 > 0:09:37I knew that they were our people who were on the receiving end.
0:09:39 > 0:09:42My sympathies and feelings really became aroused
0:09:42 > 0:09:45after watching the scenes at Burntollet.
0:09:45 > 0:09:47That imprinted on my mind like a scar.
0:09:48 > 0:09:50I became angry.
0:09:50 > 0:09:52The whole world exploded,
0:09:52 > 0:09:54and my own little world just crumbled around me.
0:10:04 > 0:10:07There was no-one to save us except the boys,
0:10:07 > 0:10:09as my father called the men who defended our district
0:10:09 > 0:10:11with a handful of old guns.
0:10:13 > 0:10:15People had risen and were fighting back,
0:10:15 > 0:10:18and my mother and her newly found spirit of resistance
0:10:18 > 0:10:23hurled encouragement at the TV, shouting, "Give it to them, boys!"
0:10:23 > 0:10:26At 18 and a half I joined the Provos
0:10:26 > 0:10:29with an M1 carbine and enough hate to topple the world.
0:10:29 > 0:10:30DISTANT SINGING
0:10:30 > 0:10:33# Go home Yeah, soldiers, go home
0:10:33 > 0:10:38# Go home Soldiers, go home. #
0:10:38 > 0:10:42In many ways, Bobby Sands is not what you expect when you anticipate
0:10:42 > 0:10:45an IRA background. He's not someone whose family is steeped in it.
0:10:45 > 0:10:46And I think in some ways,
0:10:46 > 0:10:48that's quite telling and appropriate,
0:10:48 > 0:10:51because many of the people who swelled the ranks of the Provos
0:10:51 > 0:10:54during the 1970s were people who were, really,
0:10:54 > 0:10:56not so much products of family tradition
0:10:56 > 0:10:59as they were products of the escalating violence
0:10:59 > 0:11:02and inter-communal tensions in Northern Ireland.
0:11:02 > 0:11:04When he saw that and saw the combination between the kind of
0:11:04 > 0:11:09violence that was happening on the streets by these kinds of gangs,
0:11:09 > 0:11:12and also the way in which they were more or less
0:11:12 > 0:11:14being sponsored by the state,
0:11:14 > 0:11:17then that kind of combination made it political.
0:11:19 > 0:11:22There were many people who knew him at that time who told me,
0:11:22 > 0:11:24"We all became political, but we didn't really know
0:11:24 > 0:11:26"why we were political."
0:11:41 > 0:11:44Fasting in Ireland was rediscovered in the late 19th century
0:11:44 > 0:11:47by anthropologists who were investigating
0:11:47 > 0:11:49kind of Gaelic history.
0:11:49 > 0:11:54And for those scholars, who were trying to revive Irish nationalism,
0:11:54 > 0:11:57there's an emphasis on the ancient Gaelic laws,
0:11:57 > 0:11:58and it became discovered
0:11:58 > 0:12:01that there was a kind of almost institutionalised fasting
0:12:01 > 0:12:03to rectify an injustice.
0:12:03 > 0:12:07And this became popularised by the play by WB Yeats
0:12:07 > 0:12:09called The King's Threshold.
0:12:12 > 0:12:16Hunger striking has very ancient roots in Irish history.
0:12:16 > 0:12:21It was tradition that if the poet wasn't paid by the rich man,
0:12:21 > 0:12:25he would starve himself outside his gate.
0:12:25 > 0:12:27It struck a chord in Irish history -
0:12:27 > 0:12:29particularly from the Fenians onwards,
0:12:29 > 0:12:37hunger striking or forms of protest in jail began to evolve.
0:12:42 > 0:12:44I'm feeling exceptionally well today.
0:12:44 > 0:12:48It's only the third day, I know, but all the same, I'm feeling great.
0:12:48 > 0:12:50I had a visit this morning with two reporters.
0:12:50 > 0:12:53Couldn't quite get my flow of thoughts together.
0:12:53 > 0:12:56I could have said more in a better fashion.
0:13:02 > 0:13:06Firstly, I did not support the armed struggle,
0:13:06 > 0:13:09I do not agree with the files.
0:13:09 > 0:13:13I felt an imperative to try and get the prisoners,
0:13:13 > 0:13:15their side of the story.
0:13:15 > 0:13:18I saw my role as a journalist
0:13:18 > 0:13:20to afflict the comfortable,
0:13:20 > 0:13:23and comfort the afflicted.
0:13:25 > 0:13:29He spoke fluently about how they felt compelled
0:13:29 > 0:13:32to start this hunger strike
0:13:32 > 0:13:38and he made it pretty clear to me that he was likely to die.
0:14:11 > 0:14:18The situation in our province would not be tolerated for one second
0:14:18 > 0:14:20in any other part of the United Kingdom.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28But our political leaders, they don't know anything about the fear
0:14:28 > 0:14:32that makes Ulster Protestants tick!
0:14:32 > 0:14:36They don't know anything about the real deep convictions
0:14:36 > 0:14:38of the Protestant people.
0:14:38 > 0:14:43There are men in Ulster who will stand to the last man
0:14:43 > 0:14:45in defence of their heritage.
0:14:45 > 0:14:50There are men in Ulster who will die rather than pull down the flag.
0:14:55 > 0:14:58The Protestant reaction
0:14:58 > 0:15:02was bewilderment at the scale of the IRA violence.
0:15:02 > 0:15:08That something that had begun as civil rights disturbances and so on,
0:15:08 > 0:15:13quite quickly, though, became something else.
0:15:13 > 0:15:17It spawned, of course, a reaction on the Loyalist side,
0:15:17 > 0:15:19who wished to terrorise Catholics.
0:15:24 > 0:15:27The IRA would rationalise its actions
0:15:27 > 0:15:31in terms of oppression by the British and so on.
0:15:31 > 0:15:36And yet ordinary Protestants and Unionists were on the front line.
0:15:37 > 0:15:41And one had all kinds of responses to it,
0:15:41 > 0:15:45ranging from a kind of cynical understanding...
0:15:46 > 0:15:50..and yet at the same time a sense of outrage.
0:15:59 > 0:16:01We as a government
0:16:01 > 0:16:04are concerned with the wellbeing of all prisoners.
0:16:04 > 0:16:08We have taken a number of steps to improve the conditions of those held
0:16:08 > 0:16:12in custody. But we are not prepared to give in to blackmail
0:16:12 > 0:16:16in the form of a hunger strike or of any other form of pressure.
0:16:20 > 0:16:22They put a table in my cell
0:16:22 > 0:16:26and are now placing my food on it in front of my eyes.
0:16:26 > 0:16:29I honestly couldn't give a damn if they placed it on my knee.
0:16:31 > 0:16:33It is not damaging me, because I think
0:16:33 > 0:16:37human food can never keep a man alive forever.
0:16:37 > 0:16:41And I console myself with the fact that I'll get a great feed up above.
0:16:41 > 0:16:43If I'm worthy.
0:16:53 > 0:16:57The first time I met him was near the end of 1971.
0:16:57 > 0:17:00There was a family next door that was called the Noade family.
0:17:00 > 0:17:03And the girl called Geraldine was the daughter.
0:17:03 > 0:17:05And Bobby was seeing her.
0:17:08 > 0:17:10Quickly grasped that he was in the 'RA,
0:17:10 > 0:17:15you know, in Fermanagh. And they also had a lot in common.
0:17:18 > 0:17:21Impression I got of Bobby was that he's a bubbly fella.
0:17:21 > 0:17:23We used to slag him he looked like Rod Stewart.
0:17:23 > 0:17:25Used to have big hair.
0:17:25 > 0:17:28So we called him Rod Stewart, you know, he loved it.
0:17:28 > 0:17:30With his big hair, like.
0:17:30 > 0:17:32Then he got caught.
0:17:32 > 0:17:35Geraldine came into my mother's house.
0:17:35 > 0:17:37And said, "Bobby's caught with parts of a gun."
0:17:45 > 0:17:47It was the autumn of '72.
0:17:47 > 0:17:50I was charged, and for the first time I faced jail.
0:17:52 > 0:17:57I had no alternative but to face up to the hardship that lay before me.
0:17:57 > 0:17:59I ended up sentenced in a barbed wire cage
0:17:59 > 0:18:02where I spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war
0:18:02 > 0:18:05with special category status.
0:18:10 > 0:18:12Throughout the history of the state of the North of Ireland,
0:18:12 > 0:18:15the British government have been well aware
0:18:15 > 0:18:17that Irish Republicans believe themselves
0:18:17 > 0:18:19to be political prisoners.
0:18:19 > 0:18:21And in 1972,
0:18:21 > 0:18:24the British government basically conceded political status,
0:18:24 > 0:18:27although they preferred to call it Special Category Status.
0:18:27 > 0:18:29And there was peace in the prisons.
0:18:31 > 0:18:33It gave the prisoners certain privileges.
0:18:33 > 0:18:35They didn't have to work, they wore their own clothes,
0:18:35 > 0:18:38and received regular parcels, visits and letters.
0:18:39 > 0:18:43But there was nothing to say that they should live in POW compounds
0:18:43 > 0:18:45with their military structures intact.
0:18:46 > 0:18:49That came about because there was no alternative.
0:18:49 > 0:18:51At the time, the jails were full.
0:18:51 > 0:18:56So, inside the compounds, you're dealing with an army?
0:18:58 > 0:18:59Yes.
0:19:03 > 0:19:06The huts were locked up at nine o'clock at night.
0:19:06 > 0:19:11They were unlocked at half seven, eight o'clock in the morning.
0:19:11 > 0:19:15But, basically, you had control over your own day.
0:19:15 > 0:19:21So we got our time in by developing our own real sense
0:19:21 > 0:19:24of the type of Ireland that we wished to see.
0:19:27 > 0:19:32It was the first time I met people like Bobby Sands, people like that.
0:19:32 > 0:19:35And during the debates we would start looking at other struggles
0:19:35 > 0:19:37and similarities, and trying to find out
0:19:37 > 0:19:42what it was that would take our own struggle that stage further.
0:19:44 > 0:19:46It was a very revolutionary period.
0:19:46 > 0:19:49We had a vast library,
0:19:49 > 0:19:52all political theories from Stalin to Churchill
0:19:52 > 0:19:54to Mao Tse-tung to Ho Chi Minh.
0:19:54 > 0:19:58"You want a better understanding of what's happening here?
0:19:58 > 0:20:00"There you go, read that."
0:20:02 > 0:20:06A key thing that happened at that point in time was when Gerry Adams
0:20:06 > 0:20:09came into the area known as Cage 11.
0:20:11 > 0:20:16In Cage 11, I mean, there was this new recombination of politics,
0:20:16 > 0:20:19where Adams was saying, "Well, OK, guys, we learned about Marx,
0:20:19 > 0:20:21"we learned about Mao, we've learned about Che.
0:20:21 > 0:20:24"But, you know, what about our own people?"
0:20:24 > 0:20:27And he begins to get them to think about the kinds of things
0:20:27 > 0:20:29that Connolly wrote about, that Liam Mellows wrote about.
0:20:44 > 0:20:46Well, I met Bobby...
0:20:47 > 0:20:51It must have been around 1976 or '77.
0:20:51 > 0:20:55I'd say he was quite modest, but very intense.
0:20:55 > 0:21:00He was deeply troubled and challenged by the sectarian nature
0:21:00 > 0:21:01of our society.
0:21:14 > 0:21:15He went back to reading Jimmy Hope,
0:21:15 > 0:21:18he went back to reading Mary Ann McCracken,
0:21:18 > 0:21:21he went back to reading Wolfe Tone.
0:21:21 > 0:21:23You know, the sense of citizenship,
0:21:23 > 0:21:26of communities needing to be empowered.
0:21:26 > 0:21:29And how could you develop
0:21:29 > 0:21:32in your own neighbourhood or your own community...
0:21:33 > 0:21:34..a Republican ethos?
0:21:43 > 0:21:45I was lonely for a while this evening,
0:21:45 > 0:21:47listening to the crows caw as they returned home.
0:21:52 > 0:21:54Now, as I write,
0:21:54 > 0:21:56the odd curlew mournfully calls as they fly over.
0:21:58 > 0:21:59I like the birds.
0:22:04 > 0:22:06Well, I must leave off,
0:22:06 > 0:22:08for if I write more about the birds,
0:22:08 > 0:22:11my tears will fall and my thoughts return to the days of my youth.
0:22:15 > 0:22:17Those were the days,
0:22:17 > 0:22:18and gone forever now.
0:22:30 > 0:22:33Between 1917 and 1923,
0:22:33 > 0:22:37there were at least 10,000 hunger strikes by Irish Republicans.
0:22:39 > 0:22:42The Irish Republicans were borrowing a tactic that had been pioneered
0:22:42 > 0:22:45by an Englishwoman in 1909.
0:22:45 > 0:22:48She was a suffragette who was fighting for the votes for women.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51And her hunger strike showed just how effective this tactic could be
0:22:51 > 0:22:54when fighting against the Westminster government.
0:23:07 > 0:23:09MacSwiney, of course, being a Lord Mayor,
0:23:09 > 0:23:12and this extraordinary form of protest...
0:23:12 > 0:23:15Even after a world war, it caught the imagination,
0:23:15 > 0:23:17and particularly revolutionary-minded people
0:23:17 > 0:23:19in the world saw this.
0:23:19 > 0:23:23One of their students at the time in London was Ho Chi Minh.
0:23:23 > 0:23:25And he was very impressed by MacSwiney
0:23:25 > 0:23:28and by the Irish struggle generally.
0:23:31 > 0:23:35MacSwiney said, "It is not those who can inflict the most,
0:23:35 > 0:23:38"but those who can suffer the most who will win..."
0:23:40 > 0:23:45..which is a very striking and radical thought.
0:23:45 > 0:23:49The whole tradition of military conflict is,
0:23:49 > 0:23:52you've gotta inflict more suffering on the other guy
0:23:52 > 0:23:54in order to win the war.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59And what MacSwiney had said was, actually, you know, by suffering,
0:23:59 > 0:24:03and by suffering publicly and over a long period of time,
0:24:03 > 0:24:04you are making a statement.
0:24:04 > 0:24:08You're making a statement which was, you will outlast the others.
0:24:08 > 0:24:10No matter what they do to you,
0:24:10 > 0:24:12you'll still be there, or your spirit will still be there
0:24:12 > 0:24:15or the people who will follow you will still be there.
0:24:15 > 0:24:17And in the end, you will win.
0:24:22 > 0:24:26I have poems in my mind, mediocre no doubt...
0:24:28 > 0:24:30Poems of hunger-striking MacSwiney...
0:24:31 > 0:24:34..and everything that this hunger strike has stirred up in my heart
0:24:34 > 0:24:35and in my mind.
0:24:45 > 0:24:48Frank has now joined me on the hunger strike.
0:24:48 > 0:24:51I have the greatest respect, admiration and confidence in Frank,
0:24:51 > 0:24:53and I know that I'm not alone.
0:24:56 > 0:24:59Now and again I'm struck by the natural desire to eat,
0:24:59 > 0:25:02but the desire to see an end to my comrades' plight
0:25:02 > 0:25:06and the liberation of my people is overwhelmingly greater.
0:25:46 > 0:25:50Well, when he came out of jail in 1976, I think it was,
0:25:50 > 0:25:52he came down to the Republican press centre on the Falls Road
0:25:52 > 0:25:54where I was the editor of Republican News.
0:25:58 > 0:26:02He was setting up a tenants association in Twinbrook
0:26:02 > 0:26:06and also wanted to produce a community newspaper.
0:26:06 > 0:26:10I realised that here was somebody who was quite progressive,
0:26:10 > 0:26:13articulate, left wing, and really interested in his community.
0:26:18 > 0:26:21Bobby had been released a number of weeks before me...
0:26:22 > 0:26:28..and he talked about broadening the struggle to involve our community
0:26:28 > 0:26:32much more in the resistance to the British.
0:26:35 > 0:26:41One of the sort of lessons that we brought out of Long Kesh was that
0:26:41 > 0:26:44if you have an Active Service Unit in an area...
0:26:44 > 0:26:47- Come here, mate.- ..if the British manage to take them out,
0:26:47 > 0:26:50that kills the Republican presence.
0:26:52 > 0:26:58Whereas if you can build different levels of Republican resistance,
0:26:58 > 0:27:02from a youth movement to a woman's movement to a community...
0:27:02 > 0:27:05If you build all these structures, well, then,
0:27:05 > 0:27:08if the Active Service Unit does fall,
0:27:08 > 0:27:11it means they're not leaving a vacuum.
0:27:11 > 0:27:14So we understood the theory of revolutionary warfare,
0:27:14 > 0:27:16and that's the way we came at it.
0:27:19 > 0:27:22Many prisoners, they come out of prison and they've been reading Che,
0:27:22 > 0:27:23they've been reading Ho Chi Minh.
0:27:23 > 0:27:26And basically they're saying, "This is what we need to be doing,
0:27:26 > 0:27:28"is being like Ho or Che."
0:27:28 > 0:27:30But Bobby wasn't like that.
0:27:31 > 0:27:33What Bobby began to think was,
0:27:33 > 0:27:35"We have British imperialism all around us.
0:27:35 > 0:27:38"We don't wait until we send the British Army out of Ireland.
0:27:38 > 0:27:42"What we do now is we begin to build the kind of society we want."
0:28:10 > 0:28:12He was married while he was in prison.
0:28:12 > 0:28:16So, the fact of having a wife and having a child
0:28:16 > 0:28:20and having to support all that was very new to Bobby...
0:28:22 > 0:28:28..which meant that he always had the tension of an activist and a father.
0:28:30 > 0:28:33Then Geraldine got pregnant.
0:28:33 > 0:28:35She wanted Bobby to spend more time in the house.
0:28:35 > 0:28:38She wanted Bobby to pay more attention to her.
0:28:38 > 0:28:41You were committed to the armed struggle,
0:28:41 > 0:28:44and committed to your comrades,
0:28:44 > 0:28:47and your personal relationships took second place.
0:28:48 > 0:28:52As happened in hundreds of cases, it just didn't work out for them.
0:29:20 > 0:29:22- NEWS PRESENTER:- Bombers had attacked a warehouse in Belfast.
0:29:22 > 0:29:25As the police moved in, there was a gun battle.
0:29:25 > 0:29:29Mr Sands was charged with possession of a gun nearby.
0:29:29 > 0:29:31At his trial, although he couldn't be connected with the bombing,
0:29:31 > 0:29:33he was given 14 years.
0:29:48 > 0:29:50- NEWS PRESENTER:- The government ruled on March the first
0:29:50 > 0:29:52that terrorists convicted of crimes after that date
0:29:52 > 0:29:55would no longer get Special Category Status
0:29:55 > 0:29:59but must wear prison uniform just like ordinary criminals.
0:29:59 > 0:30:01Anybody who was arrested after midnight
0:30:01 > 0:30:04on the first of March 1976 would be a criminal.
0:30:05 > 0:30:07But if you were arrested with a nuclear bomb
0:30:07 > 0:30:09at five to 12, you were political. It was absurd.
0:30:11 > 0:30:15They had special interrogation centres, special courts,
0:30:15 > 0:30:18and they built a special jail, the H-Blocks of Long Kesh.
0:30:22 > 0:30:25- NEWS PRESENTER:- This is a normal prison, not a prisoner of war camp.
0:30:25 > 0:30:27Here, the prison officers are in control.
0:30:28 > 0:30:30The facilities are excellent.
0:30:30 > 0:30:33Trades and skills are taught to persuade the inmates
0:30:33 > 0:30:36that there is more to life than shooting and bombing.
0:30:38 > 0:30:40So, they didn't conform.
0:30:40 > 0:30:43They went to their compounds, they went to Freedom Association,
0:30:43 > 0:30:47and above all they weren't allowed to wear their own clothes.
0:30:47 > 0:30:49That was the spark that lit the fuse.
0:30:49 > 0:30:53What they didn't calculate,
0:30:53 > 0:30:58and none of us could have, because there was no Republican plan...
0:30:59 > 0:31:03..was Kieran Nugent.
0:31:03 > 0:31:07They said, "Right, take your clothes off and put this uniform on."
0:31:07 > 0:31:11He said that the only way that they would get him to wear the uniform
0:31:11 > 0:31:13was if they nailed it to his back.
0:31:14 > 0:31:16At that, he lifted a blanket,
0:31:16 > 0:31:19wrapped it round himself, and the blanket protest was born.
0:31:23 > 0:31:28The administration took away their clothes, took away their beds,
0:31:28 > 0:31:30took away lockers, took away books, radios,
0:31:30 > 0:31:31toothbrushes,
0:31:31 > 0:31:33blocked up their windows,
0:31:33 > 0:31:34wouldn't give them exercise,
0:31:34 > 0:31:38wouldn't let them have weekly visits.
0:31:41 > 0:31:45You have to remember that the situation in the jails
0:31:45 > 0:31:47was like a pressure cooker. It was boiling up.
0:31:47 > 0:31:49So, the prisoners would tell you,
0:31:49 > 0:31:52the warders began kicking over their commodes.
0:31:53 > 0:31:54Then they, in retaliation,
0:31:54 > 0:31:57began throwing their faeces out the window,
0:31:57 > 0:32:00and the warders apparently began throwing it back in again.
0:32:00 > 0:32:04So there was no place else to put it except on the walls.
0:32:04 > 0:32:07Literally, the most fundamental method of warfare ever
0:32:07 > 0:32:09was carried on in the jails.
0:32:13 > 0:32:17At the start it was indescribably horrible.
0:32:18 > 0:32:21There was the excreta on the walls,
0:32:21 > 0:32:22there was urine being thrown out every night
0:32:22 > 0:32:24and getting washed back in again.
0:32:24 > 0:32:27You were lying on a mattress on the floor which was getting smaller
0:32:27 > 0:32:30because you were pulling bits of the mattress off
0:32:30 > 0:32:33to smear your excretion on the walls.
0:32:33 > 0:32:38But after a month or so, it became just a normal way of living.
0:32:42 > 0:32:46When one spends each day naked and crouching in the corner of a cell
0:32:46 > 0:32:47resembling a pigsty...
0:32:48 > 0:32:51..staring at such eyesores as piles of putrefying rubbish,
0:32:51 > 0:32:54infested with maggots and flies,
0:32:54 > 0:32:57a disease-ridden chamber pot or a blank,
0:32:57 > 0:32:58disgusting scarred wall...
0:33:00 > 0:33:02..it is to the rescue of one's sanity to be able to rise
0:33:02 > 0:33:04and gaze out of the window at the world.
0:33:08 > 0:33:10Today, the screws began blocking up
0:33:10 > 0:33:12all the windows with sheets of steel.
0:33:13 > 0:33:17To me, this represents the further torture of the tortured -
0:33:17 > 0:33:21blocking out the very essence of life, nature.
0:33:23 > 0:33:26Here, my torturers have long ago started,
0:33:26 > 0:33:30and still endeavour, to block up the window on my mind.
0:33:35 > 0:33:37It was very hostile.
0:33:37 > 0:33:40You couldn't ask for a more hostile environment.
0:33:43 > 0:33:45We were working in an open sewer
0:33:45 > 0:33:48with 40 people who wanted to kill us.
0:33:50 > 0:33:51Basically, that's what it is.
0:33:51 > 0:33:54You have 40 people down there who wanted you dead.
0:33:55 > 0:33:59You were reasonably safe in work, but then you were driving home.
0:33:59 > 0:34:02You didn't know what was meeting you there, which happened quite a lot.
0:34:02 > 0:34:04A knock on the door, nine mil in the head.
0:34:06 > 0:34:09- NEWS PRESENTER:- The Provisional IRA gunned down on his own doorstep
0:34:09 > 0:34:11Albert Miles, the deputy governor of the Maze prison.
0:34:11 > 0:34:14This killing was followed by the murder...
0:34:14 > 0:34:18Between 1979 and 1982, there were 14 prison officers murdered,
0:34:18 > 0:34:20ten of them in one year.
0:34:21 > 0:34:24They were sending letter bombs to our houses.
0:34:24 > 0:34:27They were addressing them to their wives.
0:34:27 > 0:34:31There were putting plastic boxes under the cars.
0:34:31 > 0:34:33They didn't care who was driving the car.
0:34:33 > 0:34:36They didn't care whether you were taking your kids to school.
0:34:36 > 0:34:39They didn't give a toss, so why should I give a toss about them?
0:34:41 > 0:34:44But everybody wanted these people locked up.
0:34:44 > 0:34:46"That's OK," I said. "Lock them up and throw away the key,
0:34:46 > 0:34:48"but somebody has to unlock that door."
0:34:49 > 0:34:52And I am the poor sucker that had to open the door.
0:35:00 > 0:35:03The British government have said they won't concede political status,
0:35:03 > 0:35:05and the prisoners, in their statement today,
0:35:05 > 0:35:07have repeated their intention of fasting to the death
0:35:07 > 0:35:09in order to obtain it.
0:35:09 > 0:35:11If Bobby Sands continues his fast,
0:35:11 > 0:35:14then the crisis in this hunger strike will come around Easter.
0:35:18 > 0:35:21Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought there can never be peace
0:35:21 > 0:35:23in Ireland until the foreign,
0:35:23 > 0:35:25oppressive British presence is removed,
0:35:25 > 0:35:27leaving all the Irish people as a unit
0:35:27 > 0:35:28to control their own affairs
0:35:28 > 0:35:31and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people.
0:35:34 > 0:35:36There is a tradition in republicanism
0:35:36 > 0:35:38of a rising in every generation,
0:35:38 > 0:35:40no matter how hopeless.
0:35:40 > 0:35:42That was very much to the fore in 1916.
0:35:42 > 0:35:44They hadn't a hope of winning, and they knew it. But they did it.
0:36:00 > 0:36:02Fire!
0:36:04 > 0:36:081916, to Republicans, is a bit like High Mass.
0:36:08 > 0:36:11It was the executions and the creation of martyrs
0:36:11 > 0:36:12that changed, in 1916,
0:36:12 > 0:36:16into a right-angled turning point in Ireland.
0:36:16 > 0:36:19It changed into the willingness to endure.
0:36:21 > 0:36:24Bobby Sands was deeply aware of the fact
0:36:24 > 0:36:27that he wasn't just this isolated individual
0:36:27 > 0:36:28at a particular point in time.
0:36:28 > 0:36:32He very consciously saw himself in a tradition,
0:36:32 > 0:36:34which was the 1916 tradition.
0:36:35 > 0:36:40The only way we can win is emotional and metaphorical,
0:36:40 > 0:36:42and we can win by sacrifice.
0:36:44 > 0:36:47So he knows enough about the culture that he comes from
0:36:47 > 0:36:51to know that this is going to hit certain nerve endings
0:36:51 > 0:36:54within the collective psyche.
0:36:54 > 0:36:56It's going to connect with Irish republicanism
0:36:56 > 0:36:57and its martyr traditions,
0:36:57 > 0:36:59but it's also going to connect with Catholicism.
0:36:59 > 0:37:01It's going to connect with the idea of Christ.
0:37:07 > 0:37:12Protestants would have found incomprehensible...
0:37:14 > 0:37:16..that notion that young men could contemplate
0:37:16 > 0:37:19starving themselves to death
0:37:19 > 0:37:23for what were quite modest political aims.
0:37:23 > 0:37:27But in fact those modest, quantifiable demands...
0:37:28 > 0:37:30..were actually enveloped by...
0:37:31 > 0:37:35..the much bigger demand that Irish republicanism
0:37:35 > 0:37:38requires of its participants.
0:37:55 > 0:37:59It is the declared wish of these people to see humane
0:37:59 > 0:38:01and better conditions in these blocks.
0:38:01 > 0:38:05But the issue at stake is not humanitarian.
0:38:05 > 0:38:08It is purely political, and only a political solution will solve it.
0:38:10 > 0:38:13We wish to be treated not as ordinary prisoners,
0:38:13 > 0:38:18for we are not criminals - we admit no crime unless
0:38:18 > 0:38:22the love of one's people and country is a crime.
0:38:35 > 0:38:38Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.
0:38:38 > 0:38:41Where there is error, may we bring truth.
0:38:41 > 0:38:44Where there is doubt, may we bring faith.
0:38:44 > 0:38:47And where there is despair, may we bring hope.
0:38:50 > 0:38:54Well, quite clearly the election of Margaret Thatcher
0:38:54 > 0:38:59by an extraordinary majority was an enormous achievement.
0:38:59 > 0:39:03And we all knew that British politics
0:39:03 > 0:39:06was not going to be the same again,
0:39:06 > 0:39:10that many things were going to change in the field of industry,
0:39:10 > 0:39:12of industrial relations, and, of course,
0:39:12 > 0:39:17we had the problems of Northern Ireland.
0:39:19 > 0:39:24Her views on Northern Ireland were mainstream Unionist views -
0:39:24 > 0:39:27a sort of general feeling that people who want to be British
0:39:27 > 0:39:30should be, and they should be defended.
0:39:30 > 0:39:33And above all, the thing which excited her deepest emotion
0:39:33 > 0:39:35was support for the Armed Forces and the police,
0:39:35 > 0:39:40and the idea that they were being targeted and killed by enemies
0:39:40 > 0:39:42of Britain was abhorrent to her.
0:39:44 > 0:39:49She understood there were injustices to the nationalist population,
0:39:49 > 0:39:51but she didn't equate Irish republicanism
0:39:51 > 0:39:53with the nationalist population.
0:39:53 > 0:39:57It wasn't, "They're Irish, who cares?"
0:39:57 > 0:40:01It was, "These are terrorists trying to undermine the rule of law."
0:40:01 > 0:40:04And with that, there should be no compromise.
0:40:07 > 0:40:10We knew that particularly, of course,
0:40:10 > 0:40:14because on the eve of the election, Airey Neave,
0:40:14 > 0:40:18who would have been her Secretary of State for Northern Ireland,
0:40:18 > 0:40:22had been murdered by Irish republicans.
0:40:22 > 0:40:25So we knew times were not going to be easy.
0:40:29 > 0:40:32Once we came out of '78, towards the end of '79,
0:40:32 > 0:40:35we realised that the no-wash protest,
0:40:35 > 0:40:38it wasn't enough to break the will of the Brits
0:40:38 > 0:40:41to negotiate for some sort of settlement.
0:40:41 > 0:40:46So in the middle of 1979, the idea of hunger strike was broached.
0:40:47 > 0:40:50We targeted late September as the date.
0:40:50 > 0:40:54We asked for volunteers around the blocks, for people.
0:40:54 > 0:40:56And the names came flooding in.
0:41:01 > 0:41:05Seven convicted IRA terrorists at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland
0:41:05 > 0:41:07began their threatened hunger strike this morning.
0:41:07 > 0:41:09Later, another 142 men joined
0:41:09 > 0:41:13the existing so-called dirty no-wash protest.
0:41:13 > 0:41:16This means that nearly half the prisoners here live in conditions
0:41:16 > 0:41:19of self-imposed filth.
0:41:19 > 0:41:22The decision of seven men to go on hunger strike is seen as
0:41:22 > 0:41:26a last-ditch attempt to gain political status for these men.
0:41:27 > 0:41:30Bobby Sands was livid that he wasn't on it.
0:41:30 > 0:41:34The argument was that you can't put everybody on this.
0:41:34 > 0:41:37And they said, "Bobby Sands, you're taking over as OC.
0:41:37 > 0:41:38"That's it."
0:41:40 > 0:41:43- NEWS PRESENTER:- A year ago, only the relatives
0:41:43 > 0:41:45and few hundred republican diehards
0:41:45 > 0:41:48could be expected to turn up at an H-Block rally.
0:41:48 > 0:41:51Now, under a constant barrage of propaganda,
0:41:51 > 0:41:53there are several thousands.
0:41:55 > 0:41:57The British knew that they were in a struggle,
0:41:57 > 0:41:58they were in a battle here,
0:41:58 > 0:42:02because in terms of hearts and minds they were losing this campaign.
0:42:05 > 0:42:08At the beginning of the hunger strike, they underestimated
0:42:08 > 0:42:10the determination of Mrs Thatcher.
0:42:10 > 0:42:12Here was a Prime Minister under massive pressure.
0:42:12 > 0:42:17The economy was tanking at the time, there was mass unemployment.
0:42:17 > 0:42:22So the impression was, here was somebody who could be broken.
0:42:24 > 0:42:27But what boxed her in was that she inherited this policy,
0:42:27 > 0:42:31she inherited this policy from the Labour government.
0:42:31 > 0:42:34It was the Labour government who ended Special Category Status.
0:42:34 > 0:42:38And once you inherit that policy, you couldn't back down.
0:42:39 > 0:42:43Morally, the hunger strike was very simple in her mind.
0:42:43 > 0:42:46These people had committed these crimes and they should be punished
0:42:46 > 0:42:48for them, and they should have no special rights.
0:42:48 > 0:42:52And the hunger strike was a way of blackmailing her.
0:42:52 > 0:42:55It was a sort of completely unacceptable form of leverage.
0:42:59 > 0:43:02After 54 days, with one of the strikers close to death,
0:43:02 > 0:43:05the IRA's Commanding Officer in the H blocks, Brendan Hughes,
0:43:05 > 0:43:08took the decision to call off the hunger strike.
0:43:08 > 0:43:10The prisoners believed through intermediaries
0:43:10 > 0:43:13that the British government was about to make concessions.
0:43:13 > 0:43:15But they misread the signals.
0:43:19 > 0:43:22It quickly became apparent that they had no deal.
0:43:22 > 0:43:26The arrangement was that Britain wasn't to call off the hunger strike
0:43:26 > 0:43:27without consulting Bobby Sands,
0:43:27 > 0:43:29because Bobby was the OC of the prisoners.
0:43:29 > 0:43:31He had succeeded Brendan.
0:43:31 > 0:43:33Bobby was one of the boys, you know.
0:43:33 > 0:43:36Which is why, when he was made OC, we were thinking,
0:43:36 > 0:43:41"Bobby's a nice guy and he's talented and all the rest of it..."
0:43:41 > 0:43:45But to me the most fascinating thing is how the person in a moment
0:43:45 > 0:43:48becomes a leader in all intents and purposes
0:43:48 > 0:43:49and says to Brendan, "You fucked up."
0:43:51 > 0:43:55I think in the end they realised that the government was simply
0:43:55 > 0:43:58not going to give them what they had been demanding,
0:43:58 > 0:44:00and that therefore they had the choice
0:44:00 > 0:44:02either of dying or of living.
0:44:06 > 0:44:08As soon as the strike ended,
0:44:08 > 0:44:11one of the problems that Bobby Sands had as Officer Commanding
0:44:11 > 0:44:14was the morale of the prisoners.
0:44:14 > 0:44:17So it was an absolute period of crisis
0:44:17 > 0:44:22in trying to keep the protest going after so many years.
0:44:22 > 0:44:26Then he realised that what happened in the jail was important
0:44:26 > 0:44:29for what was happening on the outside.
0:44:29 > 0:44:32Bobby immediately said, "There's only one thing for it.
0:44:32 > 0:44:34"We're going back on hunger strike."
0:44:37 > 0:44:40The leadership sent in word -
0:44:40 > 0:44:45"Under no circumstances will we sanction a second hunger strike."
0:44:45 > 0:44:47And Bobby fought with them.
0:44:48 > 0:44:54And in the end he said, "Look, you either sack me or back me."
0:44:58 > 0:45:01Some people, I think, referred to it as a kind of a tunnel vision,
0:45:01 > 0:45:08that Bobby at this point became so concentrated on this one thing.
0:45:09 > 0:45:12This is something that we can't even understand unless we see it
0:45:12 > 0:45:14in the context of the whole group.
0:45:14 > 0:45:18They weren't just facing the world alone.
0:45:18 > 0:45:20They were facing the future as a collectivity...
0:45:21 > 0:45:27..and the sole criterion for getting on the second hunger strike was,
0:45:27 > 0:45:29"Would you be willing to die?
0:45:29 > 0:45:33"Because if you don't die, this is going to hurt the rest of us."
0:45:35 > 0:45:38And Bobby said, "That's the reason I'm going on first,
0:45:38 > 0:45:40"is because I will die."
0:45:55 > 0:45:58He has, first of all, a certain sense of guilt.
0:45:58 > 0:46:01People like MacSwiney had a sense of guilt that they hadn't taken part
0:46:01 > 0:46:03in the 1916 rising, for example.
0:46:03 > 0:46:06And therefore, when the opportunity came to do something,
0:46:06 > 0:46:09they felt this extra burden, that they had to take it on themselves.
0:46:11 > 0:46:13And I think Bobby Sands maybe felt
0:46:13 > 0:46:15after the first failed hunger strike,
0:46:15 > 0:46:19and him having been the OC, felt this sense of duty.
0:46:21 > 0:46:24And he comes across...
0:46:24 > 0:46:26What's moving is he comes across as a very young man,
0:46:26 > 0:46:31and with all of the intact idealism that the young can have.
0:46:32 > 0:46:36He sees his own actions as being moral actions,
0:46:36 > 0:46:37as being good and righteous.
0:46:37 > 0:46:39That's why he is challenging, I think,
0:46:39 > 0:46:41particularly for people who don't agree with him,
0:46:41 > 0:46:43don't agree with where he is coming from -
0:46:43 > 0:46:49you still can't deny, from the writings, the sincerity.
0:46:58 > 0:47:00This guy, you get a sense when you read him,
0:47:00 > 0:47:03is absolutely conscious of his place in history.
0:47:03 > 0:47:05But he is not indulging it.
0:47:05 > 0:47:09It's not as if he is driven by a megalomaniacal idea that,
0:47:09 > 0:47:11"I'm going to be this godlike figure."
0:47:11 > 0:47:13You don't get that from his writings.
0:47:13 > 0:47:17What you get from his writings is a very old-fashioned,
0:47:17 > 0:47:19almost Victorian sense of duty.
0:47:23 > 0:47:26I have always taken a lesson from something that was told to me
0:47:26 > 0:47:28by a sound man.
0:47:28 > 0:47:31That is that everyone,
0:47:31 > 0:47:34republican or otherwise,
0:47:34 > 0:47:36has his own particular part to play.
0:47:37 > 0:47:40No part is too great or too small.
0:47:40 > 0:47:43No-one is too old or too young to do something.
0:47:59 > 0:48:03Just a normal day, I open the cell, the prisoner said to me,
0:48:03 > 0:48:05"I'm refusing food."
0:48:05 > 0:48:07"OK, no problem."
0:48:07 > 0:48:09The food was left in the cell.
0:48:10 > 0:48:15It was two scoops of potato, fish, one ladleful of peas,
0:48:15 > 0:48:19two slices of bread with butter, and tea.
0:48:19 > 0:48:22It's like I said to them, "I'm putting the food into you.
0:48:22 > 0:48:25"If you don't want to eat it, that's up to you.
0:48:25 > 0:48:28"We'll put the food in, we'll take the food out.
0:48:28 > 0:48:30"And we'll do that three times a day."
0:48:30 > 0:48:32And that was their choice.
0:48:32 > 0:48:35If they wanted to commit suicide, that was their choice.
0:48:47 > 0:48:50Tonight's tea was pie and beans,
0:48:50 > 0:48:52and although hunger may fuel my imagination,
0:48:52 > 0:48:56I don't exaggerate - the beans were nearly falling off the plate.
0:48:56 > 0:48:59If I say this all the time to the lads, they would worry about me.
0:48:59 > 0:49:01But I'm all right.
0:49:02 > 0:49:04One of the big difficulties
0:49:04 > 0:49:06that the support movement for the prisoners
0:49:06 > 0:49:10on the inside faced was a lack of publicity.
0:49:12 > 0:49:17There was practically no publicity in advance of it starting,
0:49:17 > 0:49:21and practically no publicity while the hunger strike was unfolding
0:49:21 > 0:49:23and Bobby Sands was leading it.
0:49:23 > 0:49:26There had been so much attention given to the first one
0:49:26 > 0:49:30that the view from the leadership outside was it would be difficult
0:49:30 > 0:49:32to attain the same level of mobilisation
0:49:32 > 0:49:34due to the fact that didn't work.
0:49:36 > 0:49:41The first few weeks was pretty flat in terms of protest on the streets.
0:49:41 > 0:49:43The Frank Maguire thing was the catalyst.
0:49:44 > 0:49:48Frank Maguire, who had been the MP for Fermanagh South Tyrone...
0:49:48 > 0:49:51About two weeks into Bobby's hunger strike,
0:49:51 > 0:49:54Frank Maguire collapsed and died of a heart attack.
0:49:54 > 0:49:59I immediately thought to myself, if it was possible,
0:49:59 > 0:50:01and if there was a by-election,
0:50:01 > 0:50:03we should put Bobby Sands's name forward
0:50:03 > 0:50:05to stand in Fermanagh South Tyrone.
0:50:08 > 0:50:10We had major worries about it, of course.
0:50:10 > 0:50:13We would have to get the agreement of Bobby Sands,
0:50:13 > 0:50:18and even if Bobby lost by one vote, Thatcher would have crowed,
0:50:18 > 0:50:19"Even your own people rejected you."
0:50:22 > 0:50:24Within the provisional republican movement
0:50:24 > 0:50:27there had been a deep scepticism about electoral politics,
0:50:27 > 0:50:30because there was a notion that the North was a place in which
0:50:30 > 0:50:33the electoral maths was against you by design,
0:50:33 > 0:50:37so when you put someone up for election to the House of Commons,
0:50:37 > 0:50:40this in itself is a change of approach of a dramatic kind.
0:50:40 > 0:50:43But it was a risk, because it was breaking with the instincts
0:50:43 > 0:50:45of provisional republicanism,
0:50:45 > 0:50:47which had been hostile towards the compromises
0:50:47 > 0:50:51which they saw as being involved in electoral politics.
0:50:51 > 0:50:53At the time I think people saw it
0:50:53 > 0:50:58as a politicisation of the hunger strike itself.
0:50:58 > 0:51:00And some people saw that as a great thing,
0:51:00 > 0:51:03as a way of kind of democratising that struggle.
0:51:03 > 0:51:04And some people saw it as a cynical move.
0:51:04 > 0:51:07This was Sinn Fein trying to take advantage
0:51:07 > 0:51:10of this extraordinary situation that was going on within the prison.
0:51:19 > 0:51:21My body is broken and cold.
0:51:21 > 0:51:23I'm lonely and I need comfort.
0:51:25 > 0:51:29From somewhere afar I hear those familiar voices which keep me going.
0:51:29 > 0:51:30"We're with you, son.
0:51:30 > 0:51:32"We are with you."
0:51:34 > 0:51:37I went in to get him to sign papers.
0:51:37 > 0:51:40At the time I was only 26, 27,
0:51:40 > 0:51:42and obviously didn't realise
0:51:42 > 0:51:45what maybe I was getting into.
0:51:45 > 0:51:47But, however,
0:51:47 > 0:51:53I said to him, I remember, and he was a bit offended, I said to him,
0:51:53 > 0:51:57"If you ever think of changing your mind about this, tell me."
0:51:57 > 0:52:00He says, "That doesn't arise at all."
0:52:02 > 0:52:05I noticed that his dinner was sitting on the tray.
0:52:07 > 0:52:10I did obviously realise that this was a very serious place,
0:52:10 > 0:52:13and that this man meant business, you know.
0:52:13 > 0:52:15And he did say to me, he said he would die.
0:52:15 > 0:52:18He said, "I know that I will die."
0:52:30 > 0:52:34Hunger strikes are a peculiarly modern tactic.
0:52:34 > 0:52:35They fit in two ways with developments
0:52:35 > 0:52:37in the contemporary world,
0:52:37 > 0:52:39one of which is the power of the media,
0:52:39 > 0:52:42which means that somebody suffering in one place in the world
0:52:42 > 0:52:45can be accessible to everybody in the world.
0:52:45 > 0:52:49So states become more and more reluctant to create victims
0:52:49 > 0:52:51or create martyrs, at least publicly.
0:52:51 > 0:52:53And therefore, if the state is not going to create martyrs,
0:52:53 > 0:52:56people will have to make martyrs of themselves.
0:52:58 > 0:53:00So in 1963,
0:53:00 > 0:53:01we saw the incredibly potent image
0:53:01 > 0:53:04of the Buddhist monk from South Vietnam
0:53:04 > 0:53:05who set himself on fire.
0:53:05 > 0:53:09And that became an image that was beamed around the world,
0:53:09 > 0:53:12and became crucial in undermining the American regime
0:53:12 > 0:53:14in South Vietnam.
0:53:14 > 0:53:18And that's an example of the kind of power of self-inflicted suffering
0:53:18 > 0:53:22to move people, even people who have no connection with the struggle.
0:53:27 > 0:53:31So we were very conscious, if we were to achieve anything
0:53:31 > 0:53:33within our own publicity,
0:53:33 > 0:53:38that the imagery of our prisoners... We had to humanise them.
0:53:38 > 0:53:41Bobby had went into prison very early,
0:53:41 > 0:53:43so there weren't really any great photographs of him.
0:53:43 > 0:53:45I remember the ones we had taken,
0:53:45 > 0:53:47that's the ones when we were in the prison.
0:53:49 > 0:53:55That particular one was Tomboy, myself, Bobby and Denis.
0:53:55 > 0:53:57I don't know where the camera came from.
0:53:57 > 0:53:59I still don't know where it came from or who owned it
0:53:59 > 0:54:01and the photo was taken.
0:54:04 > 0:54:07The image doesn't give you any deep reading of the expression
0:54:07 > 0:54:09or of that person.
0:54:09 > 0:54:14So the sort of ambiguity of the image itself is crucial
0:54:14 > 0:54:18to the projection of martyrdom onto the figure...
0:54:22 > 0:54:25..and it's really this kind of dialogue
0:54:25 > 0:54:28between the image and the viewer,
0:54:28 > 0:54:30the viewer thinking of the suffering,
0:54:30 > 0:54:34or the kind of otherworldliness of what they've done.
0:54:37 > 0:54:40And images have a certain impact,
0:54:40 > 0:54:43or a certain potency, you could say.
0:54:43 > 0:54:48But it takes events outside of the image to create
0:54:48 > 0:54:52the full kind of fusion, if you like, of that iconography.
0:55:06 > 0:55:08- NEWS PRESENTER: - After the First World War,
0:55:08 > 0:55:11Churchill wrote that entire countries had been swept away,
0:55:11 > 0:55:15but the dreary spires of Fermanagh and Tyrone still stood intact.
0:55:15 > 0:55:19There are 5,000 more nationalist voters than unionist voters here,
0:55:19 > 0:55:24and only the unwillingness to elect an IRA man will cut into that.
0:55:24 > 0:55:29Well, it's a terrible choice between a provisional IRA man on one hand,
0:55:29 > 0:55:33and a reactionary discredited unionist.
0:55:33 > 0:55:37So it is an acute dilemma for a large number of Catholics
0:55:37 > 0:55:39in the constituency.
0:55:39 > 0:55:41People are not being asked to come out
0:55:41 > 0:55:43and make any decision in opposition to
0:55:43 > 0:55:47or in favour of violence or armed struggle or anything else.
0:55:47 > 0:55:50Bobby Sands is the single anti-unionist candidate
0:55:50 > 0:55:53in this election, standing on a single issue.
0:56:00 > 0:56:04A lot of what Bobby Sands was doing in a way was taking one truth
0:56:04 > 0:56:07and making a different truth.
0:56:07 > 0:56:09The truth he was taking
0:56:09 > 0:56:13was the truth that actually the IRA was not suffering.
0:56:13 > 0:56:16The IRA was not a victim in the Troubles.
0:56:18 > 0:56:23The vast majority of IRA killings were pretty safe for the killer.
0:56:23 > 0:56:26Their classic weapon was the car bomb.
0:56:26 > 0:56:29You set the bomb, you walked away from the carnage, you were safe.
0:56:29 > 0:56:32You walked up to somebody's door, you knocked on the door,
0:56:32 > 0:56:34you shot somebody in the head, you walked away.
0:56:36 > 0:56:39You placed a mine on a road when a British Army convoy
0:56:39 > 0:56:42was coming along, and you did it by remote control.
0:56:44 > 0:56:47And remote control is not the warrior's honour.
0:56:48 > 0:56:52What the hunger strikes did partly for the IRA, I think,
0:56:52 > 0:56:54was reversed that truth.
0:56:56 > 0:56:59They couldn't do their courage in the usual way that soldiers do,
0:56:59 > 0:57:00so how could you do it?
0:57:00 > 0:57:02You could do it by dying.
0:57:03 > 0:57:06Here was someone on their behalf, almost, who was saying,
0:57:06 > 0:57:08"I will show exemplary courage,"
0:57:08 > 0:57:10and therefore somehow change in people's heads
0:57:10 > 0:57:13the idea of what this movement is about.
0:57:14 > 0:57:17He was only a child in '68 when the civil rights movement started.
0:57:19 > 0:57:22But the IRA really didn't understand what Bobby Sands was doing.
0:57:25 > 0:57:27What does the IRA go and do?
0:57:27 > 0:57:31Right in the heart of the election campaign, they murder,
0:57:31 > 0:57:34in the most grotesque way, Joanne Mathers, mother of two,
0:57:34 > 0:57:37for the awful crime of collecting census forms.
0:57:40 > 0:57:42So they're saying, "You know what?
0:57:42 > 0:57:44"It still is about killing and we're going to keep doing it."
0:57:44 > 0:57:48And for the voters in Fermanagh South Tyrone,
0:57:48 > 0:57:50you have this awful dilemma.
0:57:50 > 0:57:52What are they actually voting for?
0:57:56 > 0:58:00Joanne Mathers is buried on the day of the election results.
0:58:01 > 0:58:04So are they voting compassionately to save a life
0:58:04 > 0:58:07or are they voting for an organisation
0:58:07 > 0:58:09which is in the business of taking life?
0:58:17 > 0:58:20The count took place in the technical college in Enniskillen.
0:58:20 > 0:58:24I've never seen so many cameramen, press, from Radio Moscow,
0:58:24 > 0:58:29Radio Prague, Australia, Japan, all there because they saw this,
0:58:29 > 0:58:32I think, in terms of David versus Goliath.
0:58:32 > 0:58:34There was Bobby Sands, there was Thatcher.
0:58:36 > 0:58:41Sands, Bobby, Anti H-Block, Armagh,
0:58:41 > 0:58:48- political prisoner - 30,492. - CHEERING
0:58:48 > 0:58:52West, Henry W, Ulster Unionist -
0:58:52 > 0:58:5629,046.
0:58:56 > 0:59:01And I declare that Bobby Sands has been duly elected
0:59:01 > 0:59:04to serve as a member for this constituency.
0:59:04 > 0:59:07CHEERING
0:59:07 > 0:59:11I always remember the smile on his mother and his sister's face.
0:59:11 > 0:59:14I presume they would have believed and hoped
0:59:14 > 0:59:17that it would have saved his life.
0:59:17 > 0:59:20I went in to see him the next day and he was pleased,
0:59:20 > 0:59:23but he said to me, he says, "It makes no difference."
0:59:23 > 0:59:26He said, "It will make no difference to me."
0:59:26 > 0:59:28He knew. He seemed to have it worked out, you know?
0:59:28 > 0:59:31It is a tremendous boost for the H-Block campaign,
0:59:31 > 0:59:34but it's bound to be regarded throughout the world
0:59:34 > 0:59:35as much more than that -
0:59:35 > 0:59:38as a victory for the IRA.
0:59:38 > 0:59:42- NEWS PRESENTER:- Sands's election to parliament embarrassed the British
0:59:42 > 0:59:45and it has made Sands more than the folk hero he had already become.
0:59:45 > 0:59:49This 11-year-old boy sitting on the debris of a recent riot
0:59:49 > 0:59:51says Sands is dying for him.
0:59:51 > 0:59:54- POLICE OFFICER:- You are causing an obstruction.
0:59:54 > 0:59:56You are required to disperse.
0:59:57 > 1:00:00I have no doubts or regrets about what I am doing
1:00:00 > 1:00:03for I know what I have faced for eight years,
1:00:03 > 1:00:06and in particular for the last four and a half years, others will face.
1:00:09 > 1:00:11All men must have hope and never lose heart...
1:00:13 > 1:00:16..but my hope lies in the ultimate victory for my poor people.
1:00:18 > 1:00:19Is there any hope greater than that?
1:00:31 > 1:00:35England was the big fish in the small pool,
1:00:35 > 1:00:41and then suddenly the big whale of America swims in.
1:00:41 > 1:00:45If America gets involved, everything changes.
1:01:01 > 1:01:03They are political prisoners,
1:01:03 > 1:01:05whether the British say they are or not.
1:01:05 > 1:01:07And let's pray for a united Ireland.
1:01:07 > 1:01:10- Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. - INDISTINCT CHEERING
1:01:15 > 1:01:17We are screaming that the British Government
1:01:17 > 1:01:19has to end the war.
1:01:21 > 1:01:25I believed that the solution was getting America involved.
1:01:25 > 1:01:29The more people who put pressure on the American government
1:01:29 > 1:01:30to do something, the better.
1:01:34 > 1:01:36It was a difficult one
1:01:36 > 1:01:40to explain to an Irish-American audience.
1:01:40 > 1:01:46This is being used to whip up support for a violent movement.
1:01:47 > 1:01:50But when you are conveying a complex message
1:01:50 > 1:01:56against the Provos' simple message - "Brits out" - our job was not easy.
1:02:00 > 1:02:02Here we were in America at the time,
1:02:02 > 1:02:05and the narrative that we had come to accept about the Troubles
1:02:05 > 1:02:09in Northern Ireland was a romantic group of victims,
1:02:09 > 1:02:11that when they went to the streets,
1:02:11 > 1:02:17they were doing it out of a sense of pride and desperation.
1:02:17 > 1:02:20It was a romanticised version of the problem.
1:02:22 > 1:02:26And in comes this character named Bobby Sands,
1:02:26 > 1:02:31and what he did was a brilliant political move.
1:02:31 > 1:02:35There was a sense here of people ready to transcend the past.
1:02:36 > 1:02:40There were voices, including, most prominently, Senator Kennedy's,
1:02:40 > 1:02:43that found a way of saying,
1:02:43 > 1:02:48"We must help the British appreciate that they should meet the conditions
1:02:48 > 1:02:51"Bobby and the other hunger strikers had set forth."
1:02:52 > 1:02:56And I think something we didn't quite appreciate
1:02:56 > 1:02:59was just how stubborn the British could be,
1:02:59 > 1:03:01even against their own interests.
1:03:01 > 1:03:03Oh, no. I mean, nobody would suggest for a moment, would they,
1:03:03 > 1:03:06that an MP who commits an offence and is sentenced to prison
1:03:06 > 1:03:08should be treated differently from anybody else?
1:03:08 > 1:03:11I'm not suggesting it, and I don't think anybody else is either.
1:03:11 > 1:03:13That's where the diplomatic effort comes in.
1:03:13 > 1:03:15They have to up their counter-propaganda efforts,
1:03:15 > 1:03:17and it is counter-propaganda.
1:03:17 > 1:03:20It is about an image of what you're trying to project to the world.
1:03:23 > 1:03:25Sinn Fein rejected the British Parliament anyway,
1:03:25 > 1:03:27so it was a sort of publicity stunt,
1:03:27 > 1:03:30but it was a publicity stunt with the power of votes.
1:03:30 > 1:03:33And that was alarming.
1:03:35 > 1:03:38Mrs Thatcher was a very conscious of the propaganda battle in Washington
1:03:38 > 1:03:39and she fought it back.
1:03:39 > 1:03:43Irish-Americans, including Teddy Kennedy, God bless him,
1:03:43 > 1:03:47were scared off, because criticise the British,
1:03:47 > 1:03:50and you'll be seen as supporting the IRA.
1:03:50 > 1:03:55And that was the simple tactic of both the British and Irish embassy,
1:03:55 > 1:03:59- and it worked.- While we might ask the American administration
1:03:59 > 1:04:02to ask Thatcher to soften her stance,
1:04:02 > 1:04:06we were not going to ask them to intervene in an active sense
1:04:06 > 1:04:08in the affairs of another country.
1:04:08 > 1:04:14They had larger concerns involving the IRA as a troublesome element,
1:04:14 > 1:04:16and a criminal element, in many eyes,
1:04:16 > 1:04:20and I think that just trumped the issue.
1:04:20 > 1:04:22But of course, not that long after the start of the hunger strike,
1:04:22 > 1:04:24President Reagan is shot.
1:04:24 > 1:04:27He's out of action for about ten days in the hospital,
1:04:27 > 1:04:30and we were about to break diplomatic relationships
1:04:30 > 1:04:33with Libya on the issue of terrorism.
1:04:35 > 1:04:37At the end of the day,
1:04:37 > 1:04:39the view of the White House was that while, in a sense,
1:04:39 > 1:04:43you could say that a man like Bobby Sands was a prisoner
1:04:43 > 1:04:49of conscience, that cause and that organisation
1:04:49 > 1:04:51is also a terrorist organisation.
1:04:57 > 1:05:00I was thinking today about the hunger strike.
1:05:01 > 1:05:04People say a lot about the body. I don't trust it.
1:05:05 > 1:05:08I consider there is a kind of fate indeed.
1:05:09 > 1:05:12Firstly, the body doesn't accept the lack of food...
1:05:14 > 1:05:16..and it suffers from the temptation of food.
1:05:19 > 1:05:21The body fights back, sure enough...
1:05:22 > 1:05:25..but at the end of the day, everything returns
1:05:25 > 1:05:28to the primary consideration - that is, the mind.
1:05:34 > 1:05:36So loss of weight the first month is gradual,
1:05:36 > 1:05:39and it's not as catastrophic as one would imagine.
1:05:39 > 1:05:43And during that month the body is not yet digesting itself.
1:05:43 > 1:05:46It's not the weight change which radically changes.
1:05:46 > 1:05:49It's the effects of the whole fasting which kicks in.
1:05:50 > 1:05:54Between 35 and 45 days is what the Chief Medical Officer told me...
1:05:54 > 1:05:56What he called the ocular motor phase.
1:05:56 > 1:06:00The muscles in your eyes don't work as well as they should
1:06:00 > 1:06:01and you get nystagmus.
1:06:01 > 1:06:04You get these rapid eye movements which are uncontrollable,
1:06:04 > 1:06:06and it's extremely unpleasant.
1:06:06 > 1:06:09It causes vomiting, and it was the phase that hunger strikers
1:06:09 > 1:06:11who were beginning to strike feared the most.
1:06:14 > 1:06:16After day 45, all of a sudden the vertigo stops.
1:06:19 > 1:06:20After the vertigo ends,
1:06:20 > 1:06:24the person comprehends everything and he can make a rational decision.
1:06:24 > 1:06:27But this is not going to last very long, and you have this entity
1:06:27 > 1:06:29called anosognosia which means the person
1:06:29 > 1:06:33does no longer realise exactly how serious the situation is.
1:06:38 > 1:06:41- Maggie!- Out!- Maggie!- Out!
1:06:41 > 1:06:43- Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! - Out, out, out!
1:06:48 > 1:06:50You could very quickly see on the streets of Dublin,
1:06:50 > 1:06:51on the streets of Cork,
1:06:51 > 1:06:54that the emotional power was beginning to draw in people
1:06:54 > 1:06:57who had not previously been involved in Republican politics
1:06:57 > 1:06:59and had probably not even been involved in politics at all.
1:07:00 > 1:07:03And that's what terrified the southern government.
1:07:03 > 1:07:05I mean, they were really very, very scared by this.
1:07:09 > 1:07:11You've got to remember, in the Republic,
1:07:11 > 1:07:14most people didn't want to know about the North.
1:07:14 > 1:07:17You know, they had been psychologically prepared
1:07:17 > 1:07:20to wake up in the morning and hear the latest atrocity
1:07:20 > 1:07:22and then try to get on with the rest of the day
1:07:22 > 1:07:24without paying any attention to it.
1:07:24 > 1:07:26There was this terror that the Troubles
1:07:26 > 1:07:28were going to spill across the border.
1:07:30 > 1:07:32But Fianna Fail, which was the dominant political party
1:07:32 > 1:07:33in the south,
1:07:33 > 1:07:35was particularly sensitive to this
1:07:35 > 1:07:38because it had put itself forward as being the real Republican party
1:07:38 > 1:07:40on the islands of Ireland.
1:07:40 > 1:07:45In my view, a declaration by the British Government of their interest
1:07:45 > 1:07:47in encouraging the unity of Ireland...
1:07:47 > 1:07:50CHEERING DROWNS SPEECH
1:07:50 > 1:07:52And then, with the hunger strikes,
1:07:52 > 1:07:58you had Sinn Fein and the IRA making a really vivid claim to saying,
1:07:58 > 1:08:01"You are not the Republicans, we are the Republicans."
1:08:01 > 1:08:03You can pull up your rhetoric,
1:08:03 > 1:08:05we can pull up the bodies of starving men.
1:08:05 > 1:08:10I'm continually... I'm still very deeply concerned and anxious
1:08:10 > 1:08:13about the H-Block situation.
1:08:13 > 1:08:16And the British Government fully understand that concern.
1:08:16 > 1:08:18An election is pending.
1:08:18 > 1:08:20Now, that is what worries Mr Haughey,
1:08:20 > 1:08:22that he is going to lose power.
1:08:22 > 1:08:26The electoral arithmetic is very tight
1:08:26 > 1:08:29and any growth in support for H-Block supporters
1:08:29 > 1:08:32could be translated into elections to the Dail,
1:08:32 > 1:08:36and you see an increasing number of desperate attempts
1:08:36 > 1:08:39to try and produce some sort of initiative - anything.
1:08:42 > 1:08:45Mr Bobby Sands, the IRA hunger striker,
1:08:45 > 1:08:47has been given the last rites by a Roman Catholic priest
1:08:47 > 1:08:50in the hospital of the Maze prison near Belfast.
1:08:50 > 1:08:53The Northern Ireland Office has granted his request
1:08:53 > 1:08:56for a special visit from the Dublin MPs Sile de Valera, Neil Blaney
1:08:56 > 1:08:58and John O'Connell,
1:08:58 > 1:09:01in the hope that they can persuade him to give up his seven-week fast.
1:09:04 > 1:09:06It was a very, obviously, emotional meeting.
1:09:06 > 1:09:08Dr John O'Connell, who was Health Minister,
1:09:08 > 1:09:11he says to Neil Blaney, "I'm going to ask him to come off."
1:09:11 > 1:09:14And Blaney says, "Don't. You can't do that."
1:09:14 > 1:09:15He says, "I am. I have to."
1:09:18 > 1:09:21He was very ill. He was blind in one eye,
1:09:21 > 1:09:23because I always remember him rubbing his eye.
1:09:23 > 1:09:25And Sile de Valera was crying.
1:09:26 > 1:09:30O'Connell pressed Bobby to come off but he said he wasn't
1:09:30 > 1:09:32and he told him about all the suffering
1:09:32 > 1:09:36that they had done in the H-Blocks.
1:09:36 > 1:09:39And that only exacerbated the situation with Sile de Valera,
1:09:39 > 1:09:42because she was actually crying into an awful state then
1:09:42 > 1:09:44when she heard all that was going on, you know?
1:09:47 > 1:09:49I found that I could not persuade him.
1:09:49 > 1:09:51I emphasised how important his own life was.
1:09:51 > 1:09:53I didn't think a life was worth that.
1:09:53 > 1:09:54But he was very determined
1:09:54 > 1:09:58and I got the impression he was fully resigned to die.
1:09:58 > 1:10:00I've saw in this man more determination
1:10:00 > 1:10:04than I've ever seen in any person before.
1:10:04 > 1:10:08He now weighs 47kg.
1:10:08 > 1:10:12He cannot read and he cannot focus his eyesight
1:10:12 > 1:10:14and believes he is going blind.
1:10:14 > 1:10:18Himself thinks he has possibly three or four days left to live.
1:10:22 > 1:10:26There can be no possible concessions on political status.
1:10:26 > 1:10:31To do that, in fact, would put many, many people into jeopardy.
1:10:33 > 1:10:36If everyone said that a crime which you and I regard as a crime,
1:10:36 > 1:10:39described as a crime, and which is a crime,
1:10:39 > 1:10:42if ever there was an attempt to say it is not a crime, it's political,
1:10:42 > 1:10:45then everyone, I'm afraid, would go in fear.
1:10:45 > 1:10:48The prisoners are clearly recognised as political prisoners.
1:10:48 > 1:10:52It is stupid of Mrs Thatcher, and it's idiotic of her,
1:10:52 > 1:10:54to turn around and say, "A crime is a crime is a crime."
1:10:58 > 1:11:02When you have both protagonists taking public stances,
1:11:02 > 1:11:04what is lacking is trust.
1:11:04 > 1:11:08The Government's position is there will be no negotiations before
1:11:08 > 1:11:13the end of the strike. Of course, the prisoners didn't believe them,
1:11:13 > 1:11:15and neither side wants to lose face,
1:11:15 > 1:11:17and that's the tragedy of it.
1:11:46 > 1:11:48- NEWS PRESENTERS: - The IRA's Bobby Sands,
1:11:48 > 1:11:50nearly blind and close to death,
1:11:50 > 1:11:53today refused to meet with two human rights mediators who went
1:11:53 > 1:11:56to Maze Prison to try to persuade Sands to end his hunger strike.
1:11:56 > 1:11:59The authorities would not agree to Mr Sands's conditions,
1:11:59 > 1:12:01that his friends would be with him when he met the delegation,
1:12:01 > 1:12:05and the commissioners will not now be taking up his case.
1:12:05 > 1:12:07Outside the prison, a group of loyalist protesters
1:12:07 > 1:12:09angrily put the point
1:12:09 > 1:12:11that the people in real need of human rights justice
1:12:11 > 1:12:14are those who'd suffered as a result of IRA killings.
1:12:14 > 1:12:17Bobby Sands is putting on a performance for the world.
1:12:17 > 1:12:22He is trying to get the maximum publicity possible for his cause.
1:12:22 > 1:12:23That is a cause that has murdered people,
1:12:23 > 1:12:26that has murdered children in my constituency.
1:12:26 > 1:12:28That's the cause that Bobby Sands represents.
1:12:30 > 1:12:33The Protestants are delighted that Sands chose not to let
1:12:33 > 1:12:37the Human Rights Commission intervene to stop the hunger strike,
1:12:37 > 1:12:40and ironically, many Irish Republican sympathisers
1:12:40 > 1:12:44are also happy that apparently Sands still chooses death.
1:12:44 > 1:12:47One said, "The IRA needs a martyr, and Sands is a good one."
1:12:54 > 1:12:57It has been some time since Republican sympathisers
1:12:57 > 1:13:00marched through Belfast with quite this degree of support
1:13:00 > 1:13:02and this degree of emotional intensity,
1:13:02 > 1:13:04and it took place in a mood of bitterness and confusion
1:13:04 > 1:13:07generated by the breakdown of the mediation effort
1:13:07 > 1:13:09by the human rights commissioners.
1:13:09 > 1:13:11The Irish Prime Minister, Mr Haughey,
1:13:11 > 1:13:14came in for as much hostility from the marchers as Mrs Thatcher.
1:13:19 > 1:13:23We were helpless in terms of getting the administration to intervene.
1:13:23 > 1:13:27Ed Meese at that stage was his chief of staff.
1:13:27 > 1:13:28So I went to see Meese
1:13:28 > 1:13:32and he started the conversation by telling me
1:13:32 > 1:13:35that, "We've had to deal with difficult prison situations
1:13:35 > 1:13:37"in California. In dealing with prisoners,
1:13:37 > 1:13:41"they only understand one thing, and that's toughness.
1:13:41 > 1:13:45"So I'm not going to advise the President to phone
1:13:45 > 1:13:49"the British Prime Minister to dilute her toughness."
1:13:49 > 1:13:51But it was a gift to the Provos.
1:14:09 > 1:14:12Bobby Sands was reported closer to death today...
1:14:12 > 1:14:15Tension increased throughout Belfast and there was more violence...
1:14:15 > 1:14:17At the Vatican, Pope John Paul begged the world...
1:14:17 > 1:14:20NEWSREADER SPEAKS FRENCH
1:14:24 > 1:14:27I believe I am but another of those wretched Irishmen
1:14:27 > 1:14:30born of a risen generation
1:14:30 > 1:14:33with a deeply rooted and unquenchable desire for freedom.
1:14:35 > 1:14:39I may be a sinner, but I stand,
1:14:39 > 1:14:40and if it so be will die...
1:14:42 > 1:14:44..happy knowing that I do not have to answer
1:14:44 > 1:14:47for what these people have done to our ancient nation.
1:14:59 > 1:15:02I was in the prison hospital.
1:15:02 > 1:15:04The scene that greeted my eyes, I couldn't believe.
1:15:06 > 1:15:10He was lying on his back. There was a cage.
1:15:10 > 1:15:12The blankets were covering the cage
1:15:12 > 1:15:14because they couldn't touch his body.
1:15:14 > 1:15:16And he said, "Who's that?"
1:15:16 > 1:15:19And I said, "It's Jim, Bobby."
1:15:19 > 1:15:22He said, "I can't see. I'm blind."
1:15:24 > 1:15:26HE EXHALES SHAKILY
1:15:28 > 1:15:30He reached out his hand.
1:15:36 > 1:15:37We touched...
1:15:39 > 1:15:40..we said goodbye...
1:15:42 > 1:15:46..and he said, "Tell the lads I'm hanging in."
1:15:47 > 1:15:50This is the last visit you'll have with him.
1:15:50 > 1:15:52- That's right. - Did you say goodbye to Bobby?
1:15:52 > 1:15:54Yeah, we said goodbye.
1:15:54 > 1:15:56And he just asked me, "Was there any change?"
1:15:56 > 1:15:58I told him there wasn't.
1:15:58 > 1:15:59And he just said, "That's it, then."
1:15:59 > 1:16:02He says, "Look after me ma.
1:16:02 > 1:16:04"Go and see me ma."
1:16:04 > 1:16:05So...
1:16:05 > 1:16:07I would like to appeal to the people...
1:16:09 > 1:16:12..to remain calm and have no fighting
1:16:12 > 1:16:14or cause no death or destruction.
1:16:14 > 1:16:18My son's offered his life for better conditions in prison,
1:16:18 > 1:16:22but not to cause further death outside.
1:16:22 > 1:16:24- That's all I can say. - How is he today?
1:16:24 > 1:16:26He's dying.
1:16:37 > 1:16:39I can hear the curlew passing overhead.
1:16:44 > 1:16:45Such a lonely cell.
1:16:47 > 1:16:48Such a lonely struggle.
1:16:53 > 1:16:55But, my friend...
1:16:56 > 1:17:01..this road is well trod, and he, whoever he was
1:17:01 > 1:17:05who first passed this way...
1:17:05 > 1:17:07deserves the salute of the nation.
1:17:11 > 1:17:13I am but a mere follower...
1:17:14 > 1:17:18..and I must say oiche mhaith.
1:17:18 > 1:17:20Goodnight.
1:17:29 > 1:17:32- NEWS PRESENTER:- Bobby Sands's death by hunger strike guarantees him
1:17:32 > 1:17:33a place in the Republican pantheon,
1:17:33 > 1:17:36an assured estimation as an IRA martyr,
1:17:36 > 1:17:39and one of the small but select group whose self-inflicted deaths
1:17:39 > 1:17:42have punctuated Irish history during the 20th century.
1:17:42 > 1:17:44Now, it's too soon to say, and no-one knows...
1:17:44 > 1:17:46SPEECH FADES OUT
1:17:53 > 1:17:56I was actually home when the word came through.
1:17:56 > 1:17:59It was weird, because no-one spoke.
1:18:04 > 1:18:05And...
1:18:07 > 1:18:10They just walked down the street.
1:18:10 > 1:18:12INDISTINCT SPEECH
1:18:12 > 1:18:14And someone started singing Faith Of Our Fathers.
1:18:16 > 1:18:18And as they walked round the neighbourhood,
1:18:18 > 1:18:21it was one of the most spiritual experiences ever.
1:18:21 > 1:18:25Bearing in mind Bobby had gone, it was almost as if...
1:18:26 > 1:18:30..he has given us something new, the strength of these people.
1:18:30 > 1:18:33INDISTINCT SPEECH
1:18:40 > 1:18:42- NEWS PRESENTER:- In Moscow, the Soviet news agency Tass
1:18:42 > 1:18:45described Bobby Sands as a fighter for civil liberties
1:18:45 > 1:18:48and the Maze Prison as a concentration camp.
1:18:48 > 1:18:52Tass said Sands had been condemned to death by the government's refusal
1:18:52 > 1:18:53to meet his demand for political status.
1:18:58 > 1:19:00The British Government's failure to even attempt
1:19:00 > 1:19:04to work for humanitarian resolution reflects the moral bankruptcy
1:19:04 > 1:19:07of their policies in Northern Ireland.
1:19:08 > 1:19:12It is my hope that the call of Bobby Sands's mother for nonviolence
1:19:12 > 1:19:16will be followed, so that the British Government
1:19:16 > 1:19:17can suffer the glare
1:19:17 > 1:19:20of a much-deserved negative world reaction.
1:19:39 > 1:19:44One of the grim features of Irish political history is it often seems
1:19:44 > 1:19:48impaled by terrible events, by catastrophe, down the centuries.
1:19:51 > 1:19:57The death of Sands cast a foreshadow of uncertainty and apprehension
1:19:57 > 1:19:58on the island.
1:20:00 > 1:20:03Was it one of those events that changed things utterly,
1:20:03 > 1:20:08to adapt William Butler Yeats, speaking as he was of Easter 1916?
1:20:14 > 1:20:20Certainly power beyond the facts of some sort was going on.
1:20:21 > 1:20:26Some seductive mystique was once again being generated -
1:20:29 > 1:20:34that curious mystique of Irish republicanism,
1:20:34 > 1:20:36physical-force Irish republicanism.
1:21:01 > 1:21:05One of the great strengths of Irish nationalism as a force
1:21:05 > 1:21:09is its brilliant ability to take the dead
1:21:09 > 1:21:13and reshape them as mythological characters.
1:21:14 > 1:21:18And so Bobby Sands, of course, through the funeral,
1:21:18 > 1:21:20which was an extraordinary event...
1:21:20 > 1:21:25He is sucked immediately into this kind of mythological tradition,
1:21:25 > 1:21:29and making it into something that's no longer individual but in fact
1:21:29 > 1:21:33has become timeless and historic and some kind of essence
1:21:33 > 1:21:36of what it means to be Irish.
1:21:50 > 1:21:52Until Bobby died,
1:21:52 > 1:21:56there was always the hope that the British would introduce
1:21:56 > 1:22:01some sort of reforms to end the hunger strike.
1:22:01 > 1:22:02But they didn't.
1:22:04 > 1:22:08And then it was simply a waiting game as we counted down
1:22:08 > 1:22:10through the rest of our comrades.
1:22:14 > 1:22:19Bobby Sands died a week ago, and the British Government did not relent.
1:22:19 > 1:22:23Do you believe that your brother's death will make any difference
1:22:23 > 1:22:25- to their attitudes?- Hopefully, yes.
1:22:25 > 1:22:28But I would just like to say that Margaret Thatcher
1:22:28 > 1:22:31and the British Government has murdered my brother.
1:22:50 > 1:22:52They cannot break these men.
1:22:52 > 1:22:55They cannot force these men to accept criminal status.
1:22:55 > 1:22:57They will carry it through, because there was
1:22:57 > 1:23:00another Republican hunger striker, Terence MacSwiney,
1:23:00 > 1:23:02and he left the Republicans as saying,
1:23:02 > 1:23:04"It is not those who can inflict the most,
1:23:04 > 1:23:08"but those who can suffer the most who will win in the end."
1:23:29 > 1:23:32Mrs Thatcher realised that, terrible thought it would be,
1:23:32 > 1:23:36the more people died, the worse it would get for the IRA.
1:23:36 > 1:23:38It didn't mean that she wanted more people to die,
1:23:38 > 1:23:42but she understood that the oddness of the hunger strike as a weapon
1:23:42 > 1:23:45was that it weakened with each death.
1:23:50 > 1:23:53The pressure comes on the people who are organising the striking,
1:23:53 > 1:23:56doesn't it? Why are we dying if we're not getting anything?
1:23:56 > 1:23:59CHEERING
1:24:05 > 1:24:09She would think, what's the IRA doing that they want mothers' sons
1:24:09 > 1:24:11to die? What about the families?
1:24:13 > 1:24:15And, indeed, that became an issue in the hunger strike.
1:24:25 > 1:24:27Throughout the hunger strike,
1:24:27 > 1:24:30the prisoners in the Maze rejected appeals to end their fast.
1:24:30 > 1:24:33Papal envoys, priests, politicians,
1:24:33 > 1:24:35Red Cross delegations all came and went
1:24:35 > 1:24:37without changing the men's attitudes.
1:24:37 > 1:24:40The cracks began to show in the campaign
1:24:40 > 1:24:43not inside the prison, but from outside.
1:24:43 > 1:24:47One by one, the prisoners reached a crucial stage of their fast.
1:24:47 > 1:24:50One by one, their families stepped in to stop them dying.
1:24:59 > 1:25:01Now, let me make it absolutely clear
1:25:01 > 1:25:03as I say a word about the hunger strike.
1:25:04 > 1:25:07No concessions have been made to the IRA
1:25:07 > 1:25:11and there will be no perpetration
1:25:11 > 1:25:16of anything which looks like concessions
1:25:16 > 1:25:19to those who commit violence.
1:25:55 > 1:25:57The real irony is that Bobby Sands...
1:25:57 > 1:26:02He saw himself as a soldier in the armed struggle of the IRA,
1:26:02 > 1:26:06yet winning that election had a really profound effect in terms
1:26:06 > 1:26:10of reshaping the whole idea of what Sinn Fein and the IRA could achieve.
1:26:10 > 1:26:14Just through using the rhetoric and using the imagery
1:26:14 > 1:26:17that Bobby Sands had unleashed,
1:26:17 > 1:26:21but using it in a way that was persuasive to enough people
1:26:21 > 1:26:23that they would vote for you.
1:26:54 > 1:26:57The acts of Bobby Sands came at a time
1:26:57 > 1:27:01when the American political class
1:27:01 > 1:27:03was sort of waking up to their responsibility.
1:27:04 > 1:27:09He forced us to recognise that there were plenty of people
1:27:09 > 1:27:14with whom we could work if we were willing to expend
1:27:14 > 1:27:18the political capital to solve this problem.
1:27:19 > 1:27:22You know, Bobby Sands,
1:27:22 > 1:27:26maybe he didn't even understand that something profound and good
1:27:26 > 1:27:27was just about to happen.
1:27:29 > 1:27:33It is what eventually led to the Good Friday Accords.
1:27:45 > 1:27:48There are turning points in modern Irish history.
1:27:48 > 1:27:501916 is a turning point.
1:27:50 > 1:27:531981, those 66 days of Bobby Sands's hunger strike,
1:27:53 > 1:27:56are undoubtedly a turning point.
1:27:57 > 1:27:58How are you keeping?
1:28:01 > 1:28:03In a way, Bobby Sands did win.
1:28:03 > 1:28:07He is always going to be there in the consciousness of revolutionaries
1:28:07 > 1:28:09around the world. But in fact,
1:28:09 > 1:28:13he posed a really significant challenge to revolutionaries
1:28:13 > 1:28:17because by reaching back into Irish history, into the notion that,
1:28:17 > 1:28:21actually, you win by enduring and not by inflicting suffering,
1:28:21 > 1:28:24he changed the nature of how people should think about
1:28:24 > 1:28:26how they might force political change.
1:28:26 > 1:28:29You win when you capture the public imagination.
1:28:35 > 1:28:37I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world.
1:28:39 > 1:28:41May God have mercy on my soul.
1:28:51 > 1:28:55# When inner scars
1:28:55 > 1:28:59# Show in your face
1:28:59 > 1:29:04# And darkness hides
1:29:04 > 1:29:08# Your sense of place
1:29:08 > 1:29:13# Well, I won't speak
1:29:13 > 1:29:18# I will refrain
1:29:18 > 1:29:21# And be the song
1:29:22 > 1:29:24# Just be the song... #