BOBBY SANDS was born in 1954 in Rathcoole, a predominantly loyalist district of north Belfast. His 27th birthday fell on the ninth day of his 66-day hunger-strike. His sisters Marcella, one year younger, and Bernadette, were born in April 1955 and November 1958, respectively. All three lived their early years at Abbots Cross in the Newtownabbey area of north Belfast. A second son, John, was born to their parents John and Rosaleen in June 1967.
 

GROWING UP
The sectarian realities of ghetto life materialised early in Bobby's life. At the age of seven his family were forced to move home owing to loyalist intimidation even as early as 1962. Bobby recalled his mother speaking of the troubled times which occurred during her childhood; "Although I never really understood what internment was or who the 'Specials' were, I grew to regard them as symbols of evil".
Of this time Bobby himself later wrote: "I was only a working-class boy from a nationalist ghetto, but it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom. I shall not settle until I achieve liberation of my country, until Ireland becomes a sovereign independent socialist republic."
When Bobby was sixteen years old he started work as an apprentice coach builder and joined the National Union of Vehicle Builders and the ATG-WU. In an article printed in 'An Phoblacht/Republican News' on April 4th, 1981, Bobby recalled: "Starting work, although frightening at first, became all right, especially with the reward at the end of the week. Dances and clothes, girls and a few shillings to spend, opened up a whole new world to me."
 

BACKGROUND
Bobby's background, experiences and ambitions did differ greatly from that of the average ghetto youth. Then came 1968 and the events which were to change his life. Bobby had served two years of his apprenticeship when he was intimidated out of his job. His sister Bernadette recalls: "Bobby went to work one morning and these fellows were standing there cleaning guns. One fellow said to him, 'Do you see these here. Well, if you don't go you'll get this', then Bobby also found a note in his lunch-box telling him to get out."
In June 1972, the family were intimidated out of their home in Doonbeg Drive, Rathcoole, and moved into the newly built Twinbrook estate on the fringe of nationalist West Belfast. Bernadette again recalled: 'We had suffered intimidation for about 18 months before we were actually put out. We had always been used to having Protestant friends. Bobby had gone around with Catholics and Protestants, but it ended up when everything erupted, that the friends he went about with for years were the same ones who helped to put his family out of their home."
As well as being intimidated out of his hob, and his home being under threat, Bobby also suffered personal attacks from the loyalists.
 

INVOLVEMENT
At 18, Bobby joined the Republican Movement. Bernadette says: "..He was just at the age when he was beginning to become aware of things happening around him. He more or less just said, right, this is where I'm going to take up. A couple of his cousins had been arrested and interned. Bobby felt that he should get involved and start doing some thing."
Bobby himself wrote: "My life now centred around sleepless nights and stand-bys dodging the Brits and calming nerves to go out on operations. But the people stood by us. The people not only opened the doors of their homes to lend us a hand but they opened their hearts to us. I learned that without the people we could not survive and I knew that I owed them everything."
In October 1972 he was arrested. Four hand-guns were found in a house he was staying in and he was charged with possession. He spent the next three years in the cages of Long Kesh, where he had political prisoner status. During this time Bobby read widely and taught himself Irish, which he was later to teach the other blanker men in the H-Blocks.


RELEASED
Released in 1976, Bobby returned to his family in Twinbrook. He reported back to his local unit and straight back into the continuing struggle: "Quite a lot of things had changed, some parts of the ghettoes had completely disappeared and others were in the process of being removed. The war was still forging ahead although tactics and strategy had changed. The British government was now seeking to 'Ulsterise' the war, which included the attempted criminalisation of the IRA and attempted normalisation of the war situation."
Bobby set himself to work tackling the social issues which affected the Twinbrook area. Here he became a community activist. According to Bernadette: "When he got out of jail that first time our estate had no Green Cross, no Sinn Féin, nor anything like that. He was involved in the Tenants' Association…. He got the black taxis to run to Twinbrook because the bus service at that time was inadequate. It got to the stage where people were coming to the door looking for Bobby to put up ramps on the roads in case cars were going too fast and would knock the children down."
Within six months Bobby was arrested again. There had been a bomb attack on the Balmoral Furniture Company at Dunmurry, followed by a gun-battle in which two men were wounded. Bobby was in a car near the scene with three other young men. The RUC captured them and found a revolver in the car.
The six men were taken to Castlereagh and were subjected to brutal interrogations for six days. Bobby refused to answer any questions during his interrogation, except his name, age and address.
In a 96 verse poem written in 1980, titled 'The Crime of Castlereagh', Bobby tells of his experiences in Castlereagh, and his fears and thoughts at the time.

They came and came their job the same
In relays n'er they stopped.
'Just sign the line! They shrieked each time
And beat me 'till I dropped.
They tortured me quite viciously
They threw me through the air.
It got so bad it seemed I had
Been beat beyond repair.

The days expired and no one tired,
Except of course the prey,
And knew they well that time would tell
If I had words to say,
Each dirty trick they laid on thick
For no one heard or saw,
Who dares to say in Castlereagh
The 'police' would break the law!
 

TRIAL
He was held on remand for 11 months until his trial in September 1977. As at his previous trial, he refused to recognize the court.
The judge admitted there was no evidence to link Bobby, or the other three young men with him, to the bombing. So the four of them were sentenced to 14 years each for possession of the one revolver.
Bobby spent the first 22 days of his sentence in solitary confinement, 'on the boards' in Crumlin Road jail. For 15 of those days he was completely naked. He was moved to the H-Blocks and joined the blanked protest. He began to write for Republican News and then after February 1979 for the newly-merged An Phoblacht/Republican News, under the pen-name, 'Marcella', his sister's name. His articles and letters, in minute hand writing, like all communications from the H-Blocks, were smuggled out on tiny pieces of toilet paper.
He wrote: "The days were long and lonely. The sudden and total deprivation of such basic human necessities as exercise and fresh air, association with other people, my own clothes and things like newspapers, radio, cigarettes. Books and a host of other things, made my life very hard."
Bobby became PRO for the blanket men and was in constant confrontation with the prison authorities, which resulted in several spells of solitary confinement. In the H-Blocks, beatings, long periods in the punishment cells, starvation diets and torture were commonplace as the prison authorities, with full knowledge and consent of the British administration, imposed a harsh and brutal regime on the prisoners in their attempts to break the prisoners' resistance to criminalization.
The H-Blocks became the battlefield in which the republican spirit of resistance met head on all the inhumanities that the British could perpetrate.
The republican spirit prevailed and in April 1978, in protest against systematic ill-treatment when they went to the toilets or got showered, the H-Block prisoners refused to wash or slop-out. They were joined in this no-wash protest by the women in Armagh jail in February 1980 when they were subjected to similar harassment.
 

TALKS
On October 27th, 1980, following the break down of talks between British direct ruler in the North, Humphrey Atkins, and Cardinal O Fiaich, the Irish Catholic primate, seven prisoners in the H-Blocks began a hunger-strike. Bobby volunteered for the fast but instead he succeeded, as O/C, Brendan Hughes, who went on hunger strike.
During the hunger-strike he was given political recognition by the prison authorities. The day after a senior British official visited the hunger-strikers Bobby was brought half-a-mile in a prison van from H-3 to the prison hospital to visit them. Subsequently he was allowed several meetings with Brendan Hughes. He was not involved in the decision to end the hunger-strike, which was taken by the seven men alone. But later that night he was taken to meet them and was allowed to visit republican prison leaders in H-Blocks 4,5 and 6.
On December 19th, 1980, Bobby issued a statement that the prisoners would not wear prison-issue clothing nor do prison work. He then began negotiations with the prison governor, Stanley Hilditch, for a step-by-step de-escalation of the protest.
But the prisoners' efforts were rebuffed by the authorities: "We discovered that our good will and flexibility were in vain", wrote Bobby. "It was made abundantly clear during one of my 'cooperation' meetings with prisoner officials that strict conformity was required, which in essence meant acceptance of criminal status."
In the H-Blocks the British saw the opportunity to defeat the IRA by criminalizing Irish freedom fighters, but the blanket men perhaps more than those on the outside, appreciated before anyone else the grave repercussions, and so they fought.
Bobby volunteered to lead the new hunger-strike.
He insisted on starting two weeks in front of the others so that perhaps his death could secure the five demands and save their lives. For the first 17 days of the hunger-strike, he kept a secret diary in which he wrote his thoughts and views, mostly in English but occasionally breaking into Gaeilge. He had no fear of death and saw the hunger-strike as something much larger than the five demands and as having major repercussions for British rule in Ireland. The diary was written on toilet paper in biro pen and had to be hidden, mostly carried inside Bobby's own body. During those first 17 days Bobby lost a total of 16 pounds weight and on Monday, March 23rd, he was moved to prison hospital.

 

ELECTION
On March 30th, he was nominated as candidate for the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election, caused by the sudden death of Frank Maguire, an independent MP who supported the prisoners' cause.
The next morning, day 31 of his hunger-strike, he was visited by Owen Carron, who acted as his election agent. Owen told of that first visit "Instead of meeting that young man of the poster with long hair and a fresh face, even at that time when Bobby wasn't too bad he was radically changed. He was very thin and bony and his hair was cut short."
Bobby had no illusions with regard to his election victory. His reaction was not one of over-optimism. After the result was announced Owen visited Bobby. "He had already heard the result on the radio. He was in good form alright but he always used to keep saying, 'In my position you can't afford to be optimistic.' In other words, he didn't take it that because he'd won an election that his life would be saved. He thought that the Brits would need their pound of flesh. I think he was always working on the premise that he would have to die."
At 1.17am on Tuesday, May 5th, having completed 65 days on hunger-strike, Bobby Stands MP, died in the H-Block prison hospital at Long Kesh. Bobby was a truly unique person whose loss is great and immeasurable. He never gave himself a moment to spare. He lived his life energetically dedicated to his people and to the republican cause, eventually offering up his life in a conscious effort to further that cause and the cause of those with whom he had shared almost eight years of his adult life. In his own words: "Of course I can be murdered but I remain what I am a political POW and no-one, not even the British, can change that."