Remembering 1981 – After the funeral of Bobby Sands

THE BIGGEST IRA FUNERAL since the burial of Hunger Striker Terence MacSwiney MP was that of Bobby Sands MP last Thursday.

In 1920 it was expedient for local authorities, for unions, for people in high places, for cardinals and bishops, to come out and march behind the man who hungered after justice and who supported the use of arms to overthrow British rule and establish Irish democracy. That most of those people have retreated from the struggle is an indication that they have been purchased by partition rather than been intimidated by the defenders of the realm.

What has not changed in 61 years is the desire of the Irish people to be free and of a new generation of freedom fighters to fight.

The story of Bobby Sands is a sad one, of Northern nationalist youth and people left without moral or political direction from those who claim leadership. And with ridicule poured upon malignance and scorn from the same hypocrites whose moral and physical cowardice perpetuates the evils which Bobby Sands – like MacSwiney before him – fought against.

British rule destroyed Bobby Sands’s life, just as it destroys peace in Ireland and threatens to destroy the lives of Francis Hughes, Patsy O’Hara and Raymond McCreesh.

Though saddened at the tremendous loss, republicans draw strength from Bobby Sands’s death which, like his life on the Blanket testifies to the fact that English rule cannot work when there is Irish resistance.

It is a terrible price to prove a point but such is the cost of resistance, and the point when proven draws greater numbers of hitherto uncommitted people who recognise that this is the only way, and that the course of resistance and armed struggle has already forged a leadership in the Irish Republican Movement.

British attempts to criminalise the Irish freedom fighters have foundered to the extent that ironically the prison Hunger Strikers have inspired and politicised thousands of otherwise relatively docile Irish people and internationalised the struggle to unbelievable proportions.

Irish people do not watch such funerals as Thursday’s without being moved, emotionally as well as to action.

The world has also seen an extract from the political struggle of the jail spilling on to the streets — and its recognition of the struggle for Irish national liberation will have its effect, will take a heavy toll on British rule, and may well be a watershed in British demoralisation.

And all because of the Hunger Strikers and Bobby Sands.