Bobby Sands

Robert Gerard Sands (Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh; 9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981) was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland.

Sands was born in Dunmurry in 1954 to John and Rosaleen Sands.

After marrying, they relocated to the new development of Abbots Cross, Newtownabbey, County Antrim, outside North Belfast.

Sands was the eldest of four children.

His younger sisters, Marcella and Bernadette, were born in 1955 and 1958, respectively.

In 1961, after experiencing harassment and intimidation from their neighbours, the family abandoned the development and moved in with friends for six months before being granted housing in the nearby Rathcoole development.

Rathcoole was 30% Catholic and featured Catholic schools as well as a nominally Catholic, but religiously mixed, youth football club, an unusual circumstance in Northern Ireland, known as Stella Maris, the same as the school Sands attended and where the training was held.

Sands was a member of this club and played left-back.

There was another youth club in nearby Greencastle called Star of the Sea and many boys went there when the Stella Maris club closed.

He also had a younger brother, John, born in 1962.

By 1966, sectarian violence in Rathcoole, along with the rest of the Belfast metropolitan area, had considerably worsened, and the minority Catholic population there found itself under siege.

Despite always having had Protestant friends, Sands suddenly found that none of them would even speak to him, and he quickly learned to associate only with Catholics.

He left school in 1969 at age 15, and enrolled in Newtownabbey Technical College, beginning an apprenticeship as a coach builder at Alexander's Coach Works in 1970.

He worked there for less than a year, enduring constant harassment from his Protestant co-workers, which according to several co-workers he ignored completely, as he wished to learn a meaningful trade.

He was eventually confronted after leaving his shift in January 1971 by a number of his coworkers wearing the armbands of the local Ulster loyalist tartan gang.

He was held at gunpoint and told that Alexander's was off-limits to "Fenian scum" and to never come back if he valued his life.

He later said that this event was the point at which he decided that militancy was the only solution.

In late 1971 while working as a barman at the Glen Inn (a pub in Glengormley), Sands approached a man who he knew to be connected to the IRA and told him he would like to join; the man told Bobby to think it over as things in Rathcoole were bad and Catholics in the area were very isolated.

Later that year, the same man from the pub spotted Bobby playing football on a pitch near the Sands house.

As an initiation, he asked Sands to transport a gun from Rathcoole to Glengormley because the local IRA volunteer who was supposed to do the job had failed to show up.

Bobby left the game on the spot, changed clothes and took the gun.

This is when Bobby's involvement with the IRA began in earnest, according to O'Hearn: "Sands soon recruited some of his mates into a small auxiliary unit of about six or seven volunteers. Bobby was their section leader. They were isolated, so they worked with other volunteers from surrounding areas."

In June 1972, Sands's parents' home was attacked and damaged by a loyalist mob and they were again forced to move, this time to the West Belfast Catholic area of Twinbrook, where Sands, now thoroughly embittered, rejoined them.

Sands was arrested and charged in October 1972 with possession of four handguns found in the house where he was staying.

By 1973, almost every Catholic family had been driven out of Rathcoole by violence and intimidation, although there were some who remained.

He was convicted in April 1973, sentenced to five years imprisonment, and released in April 1976.

Upon his release, he returned to his family home in West Belfast, and resumed his active role in the Provisional IRA.

Sands helped to plan the 1976 Balmoral Furniture Company bombing in Dunmurry, which was followed by a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Sands was arrested while trying to escape and sentenced to 14 years for firearms possession.

Sands and Joe McDonnell planned the bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry on 14 October 1976.

The showroom was destroyed but as the IRA men left the scene there was a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Leaving behind two wounded, Seamus Martin and Gabriel Corbett, the remaining four (Sands, McDonnell, Seamus Finucane, and Sean Lavery) tried to escape by car, but were arrested.

One of the revolvers used in the attack was found in the car.

On 7 September 1977, the four men were sentenced to 14 years for possession of the revolver.

They were not charged with explosive offences.

Immediately after his sentencing, Sands was implicated in a fight and sent to the punishment block in Crumlin Road Prison.

He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish republican prisoners protested against the removal of Special Category Status.

During Sands' strike, he was elected to the British Parliament as an Anti H-Block candidate.

His death and those of nine other hunger strikers was followed by a surge of IRA recruitment and activity.

International media coverage brought attention to the hunger strikers, and the republican movement in general, attracting both praise and criticism.