Today in Labor History March 1, 1981: Provisional Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands began his hunger strike at HM Prison Maze against the removal of Special Category Status, which had effectively granted them Prisoner of War status. POW status, under the Geneva Conventions, gave them special privileges not given to other prisoners, like not having to wear prison uniforms or do prison work, being housed within their paramilitary factions, and being allowed extra visits and food parcels. Sands had been in prison for his role in the Balmoral Furniture Company bombing in 1976. During the hunger strike, he was elected to parliament. 10 prisoners died from starvation during the strike, including Sands. 100,000 people attended his funeral.
Hunger striking had a long tradition in Ireland, going back to pre-Christian times. In the 20th century, 12 men died from Hunger Strikes prior to the 1981 strike. The Special Category Status that Sands and his comrades were fighting for was first implemented as a result of a Hunger Strike by republican prisoners in in 1972. British removal of this status was part of an attempt to change public perception of, and sympathy for, the republican cause, by making it seem like they were common criminals, gangsters, thugs, without any political agenda. Kieran Nugent, the first republican prisoner to lose this status (1976), refused to wear the standard uniform, telling the warden that he’d half to nail it to his back. Instead, he wore a blanket, leading to a blanket protest by other prisoners. In 1978, this escalated to the Dirty Protest, where prisoners refused to wash and smeared their excrement on the walls of their cells. This protest spread to the women’s prison in Armagh, where prisoners also smeared their menstrual blood on the walls.
The mural shown here is at Sevastopol Street, in Belfast. Many artists contributed to its design, including Danny Devenny, Marty Lyons, Michael Doherty and Gerard ‘Mo Chara’ Kelly. It depicts Bobby Sands with two quotes from him. On either side of him are images of his Belfast IRA comrades in the blanket protest, Kieran Doherty (left) who was elected to the Irish parliament while also on hunger strike in 1981, and Joe McDonnell (right) who was arrested with Bobby in October 1976. At the bottom of the mural is a lark breaking free from its cage/chains and at the very top is the mythical phoenix, a bird symbolizing rebirth and renewal which at the end of its life cycle is said to burst into flames but to arise anew from its ashes. The mural also shows republican Sean McCaughey who died on hunger strike in Portlaoise Prison in 1946. To the right of this image are lines from ‘The H-Block Song’ by the late Francie Brolly:
I’ll wear no convict’s uniform
Nor meekly serve my time
That Britain might brand Ireland’s fight
Eight hundred years of crime
One of the Bobby Sands' quotes on the mural reads: “Everyone, Republican or otherwise, has their own particular role to play. Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.”
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