Bobby Sands

I believe that Bobby Sands is the IRA revolutionary who is better known by who followed the Troubles.

He participated at the Hunger Strike of the 1981, and he was the first of ten men to die in the prison that year.

With the aim to give a signal to the British government and to save the lives of those in the Hunger Strike, it was decided that he should have stand for election (as prisoner) to become Member of the Westminster Parliament. On the 9th of April he was elected as Member of the Parliament, receiving over 30.000 votes, more than those received by the Prime Minister at that time - Margaret Thatcher - in all her own constituency.

On the 5th of May he died after 66 days of hunger strike.



Bobby Sands, Sevastapol Street, Belfast 2015
- painted by Dan Devenny -

Bobby Sands' quotes:

"Our Revenge Will Be The Laughter of Our Children"

"Everyone, Republican or Otherwise has their own particular role to play. No part is too great or too small; no one is too old or too young to do something"


Bobby Sands died in the H-Blocks of Her Majesty's Prison Maze in Long Kesh.

The chorus of a song dedicated to the men died in the H-Block and written by Francie Brolly in 1976 is reported in the right part of the mural:

So I’ll wear no convict’s uniform
Nor meekly serve my time
That Britain might brand Ireland's fight
Eight hundred years of crime

Sevastapol Street, Belfast 2015

The entire lyrics:

I
I am a proud young Irishman.
In Ulster’s hills my life began;

A happy boy through green fields ran;
I kept God’s and Man’s laws.
But when my age was barely ten
My country’s wrongs were told again.
By tens of thousands marching men
And my heart stirred to the cause.

Chorus:
So I’ll wear no convict’s uniform
Nor meekly serve my time
That Britain might brand Ireland's fight
Eight hundred years of crime.

II
I learned of centuries of strife,
Of cruel laws, injustice rife;

I saw now in my own young life
The fruits of foreign sway:
Protestors threatened, tortured, maimed,
Divisions nurtured, passions flamed,
Outrage provoked, right’s cause defamed;
That is the conqueror’s way.

Chorus

III
Descended from proud Connacht clan,
Concannon served cruel Britain’ s plan;
Man’ s inhumanity to man
Had spawned a trusty slave.
No strangers are these bolts and locks,
No new design these dark H-Blocks,
Black Cromwell lives while Mason stalks;
The bully taunts the brave.

Chorus

IV
Does Britain need a thousand years
Of protest, riot, death and tears,
Or will this past decade of fears
Of eighty decades spell
an end to Ireland’ s agony,
New hope for human dignity;
And will the last obscenity
Be this grim H-Block cell?

Chorus


More info on Bobby Sands can be found here
http://bobbysandstribute.weebly.com/life.html
http://www.bobbysandstrust.com/bobbysands
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Sands (in Italian)