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