Other nationalist candidates were persuaded to stand down; the campaign was presented as a chance to save Sands’s life.
''I worry about people forgetting,'' said Mrs. Sands, who rarely speaks publicly. Pressure not to split the vote led other nationalist parties notably the S.D.L.P to withdraw and Sands was nominated on the label “Anti H-Block / Armagh Political Prisoner”. I pushed back hard, got as close to the gravesite as possible and carried on snapping pictures with my little spy camera and furiously taking notes on the main speech. In the end ten IRA prisoners died of starvation before the hunger strike was called off. In Print - Get the next four issues of the Boston Irish, mailed directly to your home Order online.
The marriage, however, was short-lived due to the intensive strain caused by Bobby's active participation in the Republican movement.
The next day was Gerard’s 8th birthday. On Sunday the 1st of March 1981, He wrote “I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. Geraldine Noade is an Irish. Controversy followed Sands around, but this was a man who was an elected MP at the Westminster Parliament and, for many in Ireland, what Ernesto “Che” Guevara was to Latin America. “Sands, Robert (?Bobby?)”. Others (particularly ex-prisoners) see Sands and the prisoner community developing a calculated political strategy, employing symbolism rather than being defined by it, and the hunger strike as part of an ongoing process of individual and communal self-empowerment.
It had been over two years since they or Bobby had last seen him.Mr Sands and Bobby’s younger brother John spaded some soil on to the coffin and then little Gerald was brought forward and given a hand with the heavy spade so that he too could help bury his murdered father.In 1995, In an emotional, sometimes tearful speech, Geraldine Sands, wife of martyred Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands, spoke publicly for the first time Thursday since her husband's death in 1981.Hands shaking, voice trembling, a petite Sands thanked Hartford residents for naming a small grassy plot after her husband -- honoring his role in fighting for civil rights for minority Catholics in Northern Ireland.Sands humbly accepted the friendship of Hartford's Irish, urging them to pressure the U.S. government to force Britain to end the partition of Ireland.``The biggest obstacle for us still is the British government, which is strangling the peace process,'' Sands said.The Hartford chapter of the Irish Northern Aid Committee invited Sands to the city to commemorate the corner of Maple Avenue and South Street as Bobby Sands Circle.At first Geraldine Sands declined the invitation.
Northern Irish Activist Bobby Sands was born Robert Gerard Sands on 9th March, 1954 in Abbots Cross, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, Northern Ireland and passed away on 5th May 1981 H block of Maze prison (aka Long Kesh), County Down, Northern Ireland aged 27. Meanwhile the editors peppered me with good questions and suggestions as we patched the story together as best we could.
I hope he mentioned the great job the surgeons on the copy desk did as well. Gerard’s mother, Geraldine Noade, who separated from Sands five years earlier and moved to England with their son, did not take part.
Dictionary of Irish Biography.(ed.) Local newspaper announcing the death of Bobby Sands. Thousands Of people paying their respects at Sands Funeral. The original pathologist’s report recorded Bobby’s and the other hunger strikers’ causes of death as “self-imposed starvation”, later amended to simply “starvation” after protests from the dead strikers’ families. Shortly after the beginning of the strike, Frank Maguire the Independent Republican MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone died suddenly of a heart attack.
With Irish-American support for the IRA at perhaps an all time high in 1981, several groups, largely composed of Irish-Americans, protested in their own ways. Sands published poems and articles in An Phoblacht/Republican News under the pen name ‘Marcella’ (the name of one of his sisters). Given the seven hour time difference in Edmonton I knew it would be very difficult to make my final edition deadline, but it had to be done. I had no trouble finding a cab driver to take me to the airport, wait outside while I sent the film canisters, then drive me back to my hotel, where I ordered and downed a good number of pints of beer and enjoyed the afterglow of a wild eight days in Belfast. In 1978 after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to “slop out” (empty their chamber pots) this escalated into the dirty protest, where prisoners refused to wash and smeared the walls of their cells with excrement. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bobby_Sands Provisional IRA Honour Guards stand by as their comrades fire a volley of shots over Bobby Sands’ coffin Lawlor and others are raising money to erect a Celtic cross on the grassy plot named for Bobby Sands.``We must redouble our efforts to put pressure on the British government, so that Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers can rest in their graves and know they did not die in vain,'' Lawlor said.More than 75 people -- Hartford residents and others from suburban towns -- came to hear Sands speak, and some later walked up to kiss and embrace her.In 2001, the widow of Mr. Sands, the first of the 10 to starve in a protest over the imprisonment of I.R.A.
http://www.irishfreedomcommittee.net/HISTORY/1981_long_kesh_hunger_strike.htm He urged the leadership outside to ‘broaden the battlefield’ by developing tactics to build mass support. Of the many figures who emerged to have a strong presence and broad influence on civic life in Northern Ireland, Bobby Sands stands out as the unofficial martyr of The Troubles era and as a prominent figure representing the struggles the Irish Catholics faced in trying to maintain their culture and language in a region mostly hostile to those aims. In New York, for instance, the Longshoreman’s Union refused to unload any British ship for 24 hours. In the United States, his death was a Page One story. Political impact. The body of Bobby Sands was moved to his family home in the Catholic Twinbrook neighbourhood of West Belfast on the day the 27-year-old hunger striker finally died of starvation a little after 1:00 am. Soon after, though, Sands was implicated for playing a role in a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).