You don’t get to be Racist and Irish

The George Floyd mural on the Falls Road

 

You don’t get to be racist and Irish

You don’t get to be proud of your heritage,

plights and fights for freedom

while kneeling on the neck of another!

These are the first four lines of a new poem by the singer Imelda May. It is a powerful and moving poem which vividly sums up my feeling on this divisive issue.

A sad fact of life is that racism exists in most societies. That reality struck home in recent weeks following the killing of George Floyd in the USA by Minneapolis police officers; in the response of President Trump, and the brutality of elements of the police service who have attacked peaceful protesters.

In my visits to the USA over a quarter of a century I have met many good people and many good leaders. Leaders in business and commerce, in communities, the Arts, the Labour and Women’s movements and in politics.

But I have long believed that race is the big unresolved issue at the heart of US society. It and sectarianism in our own place are two sides of the same coin. Both can be found in societies across the world where those in power or those who seek power, use racism and sectarianism as a means to divide, control and exploit people.

That’s why Imelda Mays poem is so pertinent.  And so important. We Irish who were/are subjected to racism cannot treat others as we were/are treated. When the English ruling class first invaded Ireland they said it was ‘to civilise the barbarians’. The native Irish were variously described as lazy, stupid, violent, backward, barbarous and inferior. Over the centuries that followed English writers constantly justified English actions by claiming that Irish people are culturally inferior and that the English would civilise us. An English writer Edmund Spenser in the late 16th century wrote of the Irish: “...they steal, they are cruel and bloody, full of revenge, and delighting in deadly execution, licentious, swearers and blasphemers, common ravishers of women and murderers of children.”

English writers and historians frequently presented the Irish as rogues, drunkards and brutal.. David Hume in his influential “History of England” first published in the 1750s wrote: “The Irish from the beginning of time had been buried in the most profound barbarism and ignorance.”

It was this sense of superiority, allied to the development of plantations in the Caribbean and in America, which saw England become the main European slaving nation. The language used to describe Africans was essentially the same used in relation to the Irish. The Irish were ‘inferior’; the Africans were ‘heathens’. Hume, who accused the Irish of barbarism and ignorance, described Africans as “naturally inferior to the whites.” He wrote: “There never was a civilised nation of any other complexion than white ...”

This belief in their racial superiority by the English elites over the Irish and over African peoples, and of the white race over all others, has been a constant theme of British Imperial history. A history which English people are not taught. It can be found in the stage Irish and the jokes of the 19th century which labelled the Irish as idiots and drunks. Irish people and black people were often compared to apes. In 1862 the magazine Punch, which frequently published cartoons in which the Irish had ape like features, wrote; “A creature manifestly between the Gorilla and the Negro is to be met with in some of the lowest districts of London and Liverpool by adventurous explorers. It comes from Ireland, whence it has contrived to migrate; it belongs to a tribe of Irish savages ... it talks a sort of gibberish. It is moreover a climbing animal, and many sometimes be seen ascending a ladder laden with a hod of bricks.”

Irish emigrants seeking a new life in the USA and other places following An Gorta Mór also experienced racism in their new countries. I have a small notice that was in the window of a house in Boston advertising rooms for rent which says ‘No Irish need apply’.

As Ireland grappled with Home Rule at the end of the 19th century British racism was given expression in a virulent anti-Catholic rhetoric. Unionist political leaders who opposed home rule merged racism with sectarianism. It became part and parcel of the northern state established by partition. Catholics were presented as inferior, lazy and living off the dole, and with too many children. In May 1969, just months before the August pogroms ignited decades of conflict the then Unionist Prime Minister of the North Terence O’Neill - a liberal unionist - echoed this. He said: “It is frightfully hard to explain to Protestants that if you give Roman Catholics a good job and a good house they will live like Protestants because they will see neighbours with cars and television sets; they will refuse to have eighteen children. But if a Roman Catholic is jobless, and lives in the most ghastly hovel he will rear eighteen children on National Assistance. If you treat Roman Catholics with due consideration and kindness they will live like Protestants in spite of the authoritative nature of their Church".

Racism also plays a dangerous and unacceptable role in society in the Southern state. In 2004 the Fianna Fáil government introduced the Twenty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution. It stripped a child born in Ireland of immigrants of its right to Irish citizenship.

Last week An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar described racism as a virus and urged that citizens show solidarity in seeking to defeat it. Almost in the same breath he defended Direct Provision – a shameful inhumane system which holds immigrants in the most difficult and dangerous of conditions – isolated and segregated from the rest of Irish society. The Irish Refugee Council has described Direct Provision as “state sanctioned poverty”.

In 2017 the decision to recognise Traveller ethnicity finally brought the Irish State into line with recognition already in place in the North, as well as in England, Scotland and Wales. Sadly little has changed since then. Last year the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) produced a comprehensive report on the treatment of Travellers, refugees, the Direct Provision system, anti-racism laws and hate crime. The report was a scathing indictment of the failure of successive Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil led governments. It identified major legislative and policy failings in relation to hate speech, hate crime, the response of An Garda Síochána to these and the use of ethnic profiling by the Garda.

So, we cannot decry racism in the USA and not recognise its odious presence in our own place. We cannot rail against racism in the USA or elsewhere without fighting racism in our own place. Racism is especially toxic when it infects the agencies and institutions of the state. And it is obvious to all of us who lived through the baton charges, the rubber and plastic bullets and the gas that were used by the RUC and British Army that they don’t work. They are not the answer. What works is treating people as you would want to be treated yourself.

So, be alert to racism. Understand that racists will resist change. Some will even seek to use periods of resistance to racism as an opportunity to dig in deeper. To demand greater repression, more laws to deny rights to citizens, to oppose and frustrate accountability and transparency within the justice system. They must not succeed. In the USA. Or in Ireland.

By Imelda May

You don’t get to be racist and Irish 

You don’t get to be proud of your heritage, 

plights and fights for freedom 

while kneeling on the neck of another! 

You’re not entitled to sing songs 

of heroes and martyrs 

mothers and fathers who cried 

as they starved in a famine 

Or of brave hearted 

soft spoken 

poets and artists 

lined up in a yard 

blindfolded and bound 

Waiting for Godot 

and point blank to sound 

We emigrated 

We immigrated 

We took refuge 

So cannot refuse 

When it’s our time 

To return the favour 

Land stolen 

Spirits broken 

Bodies crushed and swollen 

unholy tokens of Christ, Nailed to a tree 

(That) You hang around your neck 

Like a noose of the free 

Our colour pasty 

Our accents thick 

Hands like shovels 

from mortar and bricklaying 

foundation of cities 

you now stand upon 

Our suffering seeps from every stone 

your opportunities arise from 

Outstanding on the shoulders 

of our forefathers and foremother’s 

who bore your mother’s mother 

Our music is for the righteous 

Our joys have been earned 

Well deserved and serve 

to remind us to remember 

More Blacks 

More Dogs 

More Irish. 

Still labelled leprechauns, Micks, Paddy’s, louts 

we’re shouting to tell you 

our land, our laws 

are progressively out there 

We’re in a chrysalis 

state of emerging into a new 

and more beautiful Eire/era 

40 Shades Better 

Unanimous in our rainbow vote 

we’ve found our stereotypical pot of gold 

and my God it’s good. 

So join us.. 'cause 

You Don’t Get To Be Racist And Irish. 

 

You only die once. You live everyday.

Mise agus Martin on a tiny plane
heading to another round of negotiations in 2003

I remember Martin McGuinness, in response to a question, telling a journalist that he expected to be dead before he was twenty five. I told the same journalist the same thing. That’s the way it was in the 1970s when Martin and I first met the British Government in an effort with others to negotiate a way to end the conflict. I was twenty three. Martin was about eighteen months younger than me. As it turned out we both lived well beyond the quarter of a century that both of us thought would be our life span.

I assume it might be difficult for anyone who didn’t experience conflict to understand why we thought the way we did. It seems very melodramatic when it’s written down like that. But that’s the way it was. Hunted in our own place. On the run. Living on the edge. If there was not quite a queue of would be assassins - in and out of British uniform - there was certainly enough to justify our concerns. It was open season on republican activists. Not just for me or Martin. But many, many others as well. And for our opponents and enemies. Contemporaries from all sides. Including some who were doing their best with deadly intent to fulfil our expectation. Not that we wanted to die. Far from it. That’s one fact to emerge from the pandemic crisis. Few of us want to die. Or to see others die.

The longer I live - the more I learn - the less I know. There are so many mysteries to and in our existence. That’s part of the joy of living. Martin would have been seventy on Saturday 23 of May. Last Saturday. He lived a very full life and he lived it well. There was a wonderful online celebration organised by The Martin McGuinness Peace Foundation (its available still at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1L_ajK3UA )

Well done to all involved. Commiserations again to Bernie and the entire McGuinness clann.

Martin’s death, his wake and funeral touched many people. I’m sure others who had loved ones killed by the IRA don’t see it like that. Fair enough. They too deserve respect. Their loved ones had lives worth living. Worth celebrating by their friends and families. We all have grieved after folks we love. Not only people killed in the conflict. Parents and grandparents. Other family members. Mates. Neighbours.

In Ireland we have a tradition, steeped in our values, of gathering around a bereaved family to give them comfort and support. Part Christian with elements of another older pagan world we celebrate the life which has ended. Unless of course the dearly departed is a young person of someone deemed to have died before their time or in tragic circumstances. We have all experienced the shock of that. Of death by violence. Death by suicide. Sudden death.

And yet we get comfort from the prayers and sympathy and solidarity of those who support us. And the wake and funeral and burial or cremation service are the occasion to give expression to all this. It’s telling the bereaved that they are not on their own. We’re sorry for their troubles. Even though we go back to and get on with our own lives that coming together is important. Taking that time to visit, to pay our respects, is part of what we are.

That’s one aspect of the terrible deaths from the Coronavirus that many find so distressful. People dying alone. Especially older people in care homes or other congregated settings. Restrictions on funerals. Yes it’s necessary and I support the restrictions but it’s heart rending. I have missed funerals myself since the lock down of people I know, friends, former prisoners. It must be much, much worse for family members.

All these thoughts come together in this column as I reflect on these matters of life and death. The pandemic will pass. We don’t know when but pass it will. It will affect some of us more than others. Just as the conflict did. Some who survive will never recover fully from the loss of a loved one. Or the circumstances of their death. Just like in the conflict.

So Martin and I were the lucky ones. It’s still a wonder to me that he is gone and I’m still here. But that’s life. Our life begins every morning we wake up to a new day. So try to take the benefits of that with joy. Make the most of it. It won’t always be possible to see it like that. Not every day. But that’s okay also. It’s okay not to be okay. But try to be positive. Be alert to the wee things. The birdsong. The light in the sky. The kindness of friends. And strangers. A nice meal. A dance. A good tune. A dog. Flowers. The wind. A laugh. Companionship. Love. Children. Trees. A good walk. Friendship. Nature. A good book. A wee drink if you can handle it.

Even if you don’t have any or all of these things you have yourself. That’s a big thing. Without yourself who or where would you be. So let’s try to be happy. Despite everything and because of everything. Remember we only die once. We live every day. Let’s do our best to be our best and to make this a better place for others less well off than we are.

BREAKING THEIR OWN LAWS.

 The British named it Operation Demetrius. For those of us who lived through the 9 August 1971 it was internment day. Like many others I was awakened early that morning by the sound of binlids rattling their alarm across the streets of Ballymurphy and Springhill. 342 men and boys from nationalist homes across the North were dragged from their beds in the early hours of the morning by thousands of British soldiers and RUC Many were beaten and 14 – the Hooded Men - were subjected to days of sustained torture. 

Thousands fled their homes. 25 people were killed in the following four days. In my home area 11 local citizens, including a priest and mother of eight, were killed by the Paras in the Ballymurphy Massacre.  Five months later the Paras attacked an anti-internment march in Derry and killed 14 people. Bloody Sunday was another of many dark days in the conflict. In July 1972 another five citizens, this time in Springhill, were killed by the British Army. They included another priest and a thirteen year old girl.

The Ulster Unionist Party, which for 50 years had ruled at Stormont, had  demanded that the British bring in internment.  It had been used in every decade since partition, including for a brief time in 1969. It was part of a repressive arsenal, including the Special Powers Act and institutionalised structured political and religious discrimination, which had sustained unionist domination in the North for 50 years. Internment of men and women was without charge or trail and for an indefinite undeclared period. Some of the older men had been interned many times. Liam Mulholland was first imprisoned in the 1920s and in every decade since including the 1970s. Throughout that time British governments supported the existence of this squalid little apartheid police  state.

Of course, Unionism wasn’t alone in employing internment. It was used by the British after the 1916 Rising and again during the Tan War. The Free State government used it in the 1920s and Fianna Fáil brought it in between 1939 and 1946. Fianna Fáil used it again during the 1950s and in December 1970 the then Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Jack Lynch announced the introduction of internment but political and public outrage forced him to backtrack.

Whenever the British government went for the military option it brought with it the techniques of counter-insurgency that it had employed in dozens of colonial conflicts in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia in the decades after the Second World War. These included the use of internment, the torture of detainees, shoot-to-kill tactics, curfew, riot control tactics, the use of state collusion and counter-gangs, and much more. Instead of asserting the primacy of politics the Conservative government of Prime Minister Ted Heath handed power over to the generals. The tactics and strategies that resulted from this failed to contain the conflict but instead led quickly to even greater resistance.

I was first arrested and interned in March 1972. After several days in Holywood Barracks where I was badly beaten I was taken to the Maidstone prison ship in Belfast Lough. The conditions for the 150 internees on the boat were appalling. We were held below deck. The fold-up bunks were in tiers of three. Light struggled in through small port-holes. The food was awful and the boat sat in its own sewage. The toilets were constantly flooded. Following   protests by us the Maidstone was closed down by the British  after Stormont was prorogued. We were all taken to Long Kesh by helicopter.

In June 1972 I was released to take part in talks with the British government and then as part of a republican delegation to London. The truce that followed was short-lived.

Just over a year later I was arrested again in July 1973. I was beaten unconscious by British soldiers and interned again in Long Kesh, initially under an Interim Custody Order.  There are lots of photos of the Cages of Long Kesh available online if you want a sense of what it looked like. The camp was built on a former British RAF base. Every Cage was surrounded by a high wire fence topped with barbed wire. Each Cage had four Nissan huts made of two skins of corrugated tin. Cages held around 100 men and in the autumn and winter they were freezing cold, damp, and poorly lit. In the summer they could be stifling. Toilet and shower facilities were primitive. The food was normally cold and of a poor standard. Most internees relied on food parcels sent in by our families.

The British Army carried out periodic raids on the internee Cages. Scores of soldiers with batons and shields would smash their way into the huts during the night, drag men outside and force us to spread-eagle against the wire for hours. Many were beaten. Personal belongings were ripped apart, beds urinated on, and handicrafts – which some internees did to pass the time – were destroyed. Hugh Coney was shot dead in 1974.

Like prisoner-of-war camps throughout history there were also escapes – some successful – some less so. On Christmas Eve 1973 four of us in Cage 6 – Marshall Mooney, Tommy Toland, Marty O’Rawe and myself, all from Ballymurphy – tried to escape. We were caught.

Seven months later in July 1974 I was caught again. This time I managed to get a wee bit further. In March 1975 I was convicted on the first attempt and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. I was subsequently convicted in April 1975 of the second attempt and was given a three year sentence to run consecutively.

Now that the British Supreme Court has ruled that my imprisonment was unlawful I would like to plead guilty to numerous other escape bids including some very scary claustrophobic efforts to dig tunnels.  I was eventually released in 1977.

Fast forward 32 years and a researcher working for the Pat Finucane Centre in October 2009 was going through documents released by the British government under the 30 years rule. The researcher found a memorandum, dated 8 July 1974, from the Director of Public Prosecutions to the British Attorney General.

The key paragraph says: “It seems to me that the Attorney General should be advised at this stage before the question of prosecutions is considered further that Adams, O’Rawe and Tolan and possibility many other detainees held under the Orders which have not been signed by the Secretary of State himself may be unlawfully detained.”

In the course of the ten years that it took from the researcher first uncovered this document to the British Supreme Court decision last week a further ‘Secret’ document was uncovered that revealed that the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Secretary of State for the North Merlyn Rees held a meeting on the 17 July 1974 to discuss “an urgent problem” which the Attorney General had raised with him. The AG Samuel Silkin told Wilson and Rees that an examination of the papers concerning our attempted escape had revealed that the Interim Custody Orders of three of us had not been “examined personally by the Secretary of State during the Conservative administration”. 

Silkin told the meeting that there “might be as many as 200 persons unlawfully detained” in the North. This “could only be put right by retrospective legislation in Parliament.”

So, the British government knew, before it chose to put me on trial, that I was unlawfully detained. It also knew that up to 200 other people might also be unlawfully interned. It did nothing. The onus is now on the British government to identify and inform other internees whose Internment may also have been unlawful. That’s unlikely so if you were arrested and interned between 7 November 1972 and early 1974 and you think that your internment order was unlawful don’t wait - contact your solicitor.

The Choctaws- A Debt Repaid.

The Irish proverb: “Is ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine.” translates as: “We all live in each other’s shadow.” In other words we are all interlinked.

In our own lifetime probably no greater example of this connectivity between people and communities – of us living in each other’s shadow - is to be found in the communal response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Frontline health workers, carers, shop workers, lorry drivers and so many others have minded us despite the risk to themselves. Community activists have again and again collected and delivered much needed food parcels and prepared hot food for those in need. While this is a universal response and not uniquely Irish it is also in keeping with one of our traditions. That is the meitheal, when neighbours come together to help with the harvest or turf but also following misfortune.

There are many examples of this in recent times and thankfully lots of evidence that the spirit of the meitheal – a sense of community, solidarity and volunteerism is alive and well among our people.

This empathy and compassion helps connect us. We are able to look beyond our own individual concerns, desires and fears and reach out to assist others in our family, our street, our community or our world.

One recent example of this was last Friday night’s The Late Late Show on RTE. At a time when so many are experiencing huge stress in their lives viewers of The Late Late Show raised over two million euro for Pieta House, the largely voluntary organisation which provides free therapy to those engaging in self-harm, with suicidal ideation, or bereaved by suicide. It was an amazing example of generosity.

Last September the GoFundMe organisation revealed that the Irish people are the most generous in the world. GoFundMe said that nearly one in ten Irish men and women have donated over 40 million euro to GoFundMe causes in the last ten years. There have been 860,000 individual donations. Organisations like St. Vincent de Paul, as well as Trocaire and Concern are among many that also raise millions each year to help those here and overseas who need support – health care, food, water, shelter.

Why are the Irish so generous? While we are no better than anyone else, essentially we are decent people. Loving. Compassionate. Caring. But we are also a people who have historically experienced conquest and occupation, colonisation and migration. It’s in our DNA.  Even if we are not fully aware of our own history it does give us an empathy with the difficulties faced by others. This includes developing nations still suffering from the impact of colonisation, migration, exploitation and conflict.

The most devastating upheaval in Irish history was An Gorta Mór - The Great Hunger. The census of 1841 estimated that the population of our island was just above eight million.  Over 6 million were tied in a desperate battle with the land to produce enough for their families to live on. Most had less than a half-acre plot of land. They were totally dependent on the potato. The British government understood the dangers of the overreliance on the potato. During the first four decades of the 19^th century there were at least 150 committees and commissions of enquiry which reported on the danger of famine.  They were ignored.

The failure of the potato crop in 1845 led to even greater hardship.  One effect of this was to force people to flee overseas. They abandoned their mostly one roomed, mud or turf-walled cabins, with their sod roofs, and their small parcels of land. They left on ships (many of which had carried African slaves a few decades earlier) bound for North America. Coffin ships!

In the five years of The Great Hunger it is estimated that one million died and another million fled. By the end of the 19^th century there were more Irish people living abroad than on the island of Ireland. The Great Hunger -An Gorta Mor- left an indelible mark on the Irish psyche. In my opinion it has shaped and made us more empathetic to the experience of other peoples

One account from An Gorta Mór which has been told and retold many times over the years is the help given to the starving Irish by the Choctaw native American people in Oklahoma.

The Choctaw nation was originally from the Mississippi region in the USA. In 1830 15,000 people were forced to walk 600 miles away to Oklahoma. In what subsequently came to be known as the ‘Trail of Tears’ a quarter of them died. Even when they reached their new place they were destitute and faced violence and intimidation. One Choctaw man described how their homes were “torn down and burned, our fences destroyed, cattle turned into our fields, and we ourselves have been scourged, manacled, fettered, and otherwise personally abused, until by such treatment some of our best men have died.”

Despite the many dangers and challenges they faced in their own lives the Choctaw people were moved by the accounts in local papers of the great hunger in Ireland. One historian, Anelise Hanson Shrout writing in the Journal of the Early Republic described the plight of the Choctaw people: “Most would have experienced enormous financial, emotional, and demographic damage as a result of removal. It is difficult to imagine a people less well-positioned to act philanthropically.”   But act they did. At a meeting they managed to raise $170 – about $5,000 today. That act of kindness and generosity has never been forgotten.

Consequently, several weeks ago when a GoFundMe page was opened to raise money for the Navajo and Hopi peoples trying to combat Covid-19 many Irish people donated to that effort and cited the help given by the Choctaw almost two hundred years ago as a reason for this.  It is an act of solidarity by people in Ireland to native peoples in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah who are reeling under the impact of Civid-19. Gary Batton, chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said last week that the tribe was “gratified — and perhaps not at all surprised — to learn of the assistance our special friends, the Irish, are giving to the Navajo and Hopi Nations.”

So, one act of generosity, of solidarity 173 years ago is being reciprocated today by another act of solidarity. Is ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine.

Remembering Bobby Sands.

In 1973 just before midnight on Christmas Eve, I was caught along with three other comrades attempting to escape from Long Kesh. We were among a large group of men and women interned without charge or trial. My first bout of internment was on the Maidstone Prison Ship in 1972. Internees-the British later called us detainees as part of their fiction that internment was ended – were held in Armagh Women’s Gaol, Belfast Prison, Magilligan, and Long Kesh.

In July 1974 I was caught again in another escape bid. Steve McQueen I was not. The following March 1975 I was taken out to court where I was convicted on the first escape attempt and received an 18 month sentence. A month later I was convicted of the second escape attempt and got another three years.

Then as the rest of the internees were being released a small group of us nearly got-aways were moved out of the internee end of Long Kesh to the top end of the camp where the sentenced POWs were held. We were incarcerated in Cage 11. None of us had the benefit of trial by a jury of our peers. The British judicial system had dispensed with that in favour of non jury courts with special rules. It was the same in the South.

I met Bobby Sands in Cage 11 of Long Kesh. I don’t remember exactly the first time we met but it was almost certainly at one of the discussion groups I set up for those who were interested. There were around eighty of us in Cage 11. For those of you who don’t know about the Cages that’s exactly what they were. We were caged into a compound surrounded by a high wire fence in which there were four Nissan huts, a study hut and a toilet shower hut. At one time there were twenty two cages. In Cage 11 one of the Nissan huts was also a Gaeltacht which was set up by some prisoners for those wanting to learn the Irish language. That’s where Bobby was.

He was keenly interested in our discussions. We went on to get books from old Joe Clarkes Book Bureau in Dublin and from The Connolly Association in London. As political books were banned our friends outside used to put other book covers on them. I still have Desmond Greaves brilliant book on Liam Mellows disguised as something less dangerous. Bobby was a voracious reader.

I remember him also as a keen sportsman who played soccer or Gaelic football whenever he got the chance. He had long hair, a good sense of humour and liked music. He was very good on the guitar. I remember the two of us sitting in the study hut – in reality a wooden shed. I would be writing while Bobby would be practicing on his guitar.

His party piece was the classic by Kris Kristofferson, ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ and later when he went to the H Blocks Bobby wrote songs including ‘McIlhatton’ and ‘Back home in Derry’. They were famously recorded by Christy Moore and are now part of the tradition. Bobby would be immensely proud of that.

On one memorable Christmas Eve we held a concert to mark the occasion. There was a bar, from which a group of comrades served beer, cider and poteen they had brewed up illicitly for the occasion. In the course of the concert Bobby and Martin McAllister played some lovely sets.

The finale and highlight of the night consisted of a bunch of prisoners including Bobby and Danny Lennon suitably bewigged and costumed miming Queen’s ‘A Night At the Opera’.

I got to know Bobby well during our political debates and lectures. Bobby was a very intelligent, committed republican. He enjoyed political discussions and he was very open to new ideas. He made up his own mind.  Many of our discussions focussed on the need to convert passive support for our struggle into active support and of the need for the primacy of politics and for clear strategies and democratic structures to implement these strategies. It was at this time that Bobby picked up on the concept of everyone having a role in the struggle, no matter how small.

He was also an internationalist. He read about other struggles, in particular the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the efforts of the Palestinian peoples to achieve a homeland. Four decades later South Africa has been transformed, largely by a generation of activists who were in apartheid prisons at the same time that Bobby and we were in British prisons.

On my first visit to South Africa in 1995 we were hosted by the ANC Executive. Walter Sisulu, who had spent over 25 years on Robben island and had just turned 83, made a special point of coming to the lunch.  He spoke of his own time in prison and of his memories of the hunger strike in Ireland in 1981. He told us of the great solidarity that existed between ANC prisoners and the republican prisoners. It was an emotional speech in which he recalled hearing of the death of Bobby Sands and of the silent tribute ANC prisoners across South Africa paid to a fellow freedom fighter.

Nelson Mandela was on Robben Island when Bobby died. In his cell, in common with all political prisoners, he was allowed as a privilege a calendar on which he marked significant events. On the 5^th May 1981 a simple single line is written: ‘IRA martyr Bobby Sands dies.’ A tribute, hand written, on a paper calendar on a cell wall in South Africa which recognises the bond of those who struggle for justice.

Of course none of us in Cage 11 forsaw any of this For a small group with release dates pending our concern was about how we could transfer some of our ideas to the outside. I remember in the weeks before his release Bobby seeking me out to walk around the yard –‘boowling’ in prison parlance as we swapped political ideas and concepts.

Bobby was released from Cage 11 in early 1976. He reported back to the IRA in Twinbrook. Here he set about promoting ideas for local activists acting in solidarity with their communities. He became very involved in local housing actions including the Twinbrook Tenants Association. In August that year the annual republican march, which had previously focussed on ending internment, was now about raising awareness of the British moves to end political status and to criminalise the POWs and through them the republican struggle. It was the first big march in support of political status and was addressed by Máire Drumm. Bobby was part of the Colour Party and the photographs which were found last year of him participating in the event reveal a very young man, with short hair. Just weeks later he was imprisoned again.

Like hundreds of men and women Bobby was denied political status and joined the prison protests which were now taking place in the H Blocks and in Armagh Women’s Prisons. Naked, but for a blanket, and living under the most brutal and violent of prison regimes, Bobby was driven to write about the conditions in the H-Blocks. They provide an insight into a spirit that refused to be broken.

Bobby’s smuggled comms- letters; poems; articles; creative pieces; and stories - written on scraps of torn bible pages or cigarette papers using the infill of a biro, and all wrapped in cling film and hidden in his naked body, tell you more about the brutal reality of life for political prisoners and the nature of British rule in the northern state than anything else I can think of. These are not the invented musings or a plot device of a clever writer. They are the daily experiences of hundreds of men and women over five terrible years.

When he died on 5 May 1981 Bobby had spent one third of his 27 years in prisons. He was never interviewed on television or radio, though while on hunger strike two journalists briefly saw him for half an hour. We only have a few photographs of him. And yet his name is known and honoured around the world. His writings tell us much about the man. I like in particular his poem the Rhythm of Time. But for this occasion I think it appropriate that we read his own account of one day in his life in the H-Blocks and imagine the courage and strength of character that allowed Bobby and Francie, Raymond, Patsy, Joe, Martin, Kevin, Kieran. Tom and Mickey to put their lives on the line for their comrades and for the Irish cause. In this anniversary week of his death here is Bobby Sands in his own words. I am blessed to have known him and his comrades.

One Day in My Life:

“I mumbled a “Hail Mary” to myself and a hurried “Act of Contrition” as I heard the approaching jingle of keys. Several gloved hands gripped and tightened around my arms and feet, raising my body off the ground and swinging me backwards in the one movement. The full weight of my body recoiled forwarded again, smashing me head against the corrugated iron covering around the gate. The sky seemed to fall upon me as they dropped me to the ground. …

Every part of me stung unmercifully as the heavily disinfected water attacked my naked, raw flesh. I made an immediate and brave attempt to rise out of the freezing, stinging water but the screws held me down while one of them began to scrub my already tattered back with a heavy scrubbing brush. I shrivelled with the pain and struggled for release but the more I fought the more they strengthened their iron grip …

They continued to scrub every part of my tortured body, pouring buckets of ice-cold water and soapy liquid over me. I vaguely remember being lifted out of the cold water – the sadistic screw had grabbed my testicles and scrubbed my private parts. That was the last thing I remembered. I collapsed…

It was cold, so very, very cold. I rolled on to my side and placed my little treasured piece of tobacco under the mattress and felt the dampness clinging to my feet.

That’s another day nearer to victory. I thought feeling very hungry. I was a skeleton compared to what I used to be but it didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered except remaining unbroken. I rolled over once against, the cold biting at me. They have nothing in their entire imperial arsenal to break the spirit of one single Republican political prisoner-of-war who refuses to be broken. I thought, and that was very true. They cannot or never will break our spirit. I rolled over again freezing and the snow came in thew window on top of my blankets. “Tiocfaidh ár lá,” I said to myself. “Tiocfaidh ar lá.”