Irish Hunger Strikes Chapter 26

100,000 follow Bobby’s coffin from Twinbrook to Milltown led by a single piper

The Brits handed Bobby’s body over to the Sands family on Tuesday afternoon. He lied in state in an open casket in the living room of the family home in Twinbrook with an around-the-clock honor guard of young, uniformed IRA volunteers. Many relations, friends and comrades in the movement who worked with Bobby, supporters from around the world and top Republicans who never met him in life, came to pay their respects for him in death. And to pay respects for how and what he died for.

The dogs of the press

The dogs of the British press bayed outside the home; one even offering 75,000 pounds sterling to the Sands family for a single photo of Bobby in his coffin. Of course, he was told what he could do with his British blood money.

Rosaleen, Bobby’s mother, did let a British journalist into the house. He asked a Sinn Fein man if he could just see Bobby, for a story no doubt. She bade him enter, "Why not let them see what they’ve done."

"Christ in Glory"

Near the house, on Laburnum Way, the local youths built an impressive shrine out of discarded boxes. They put a crucifix on the top and painted the words "Peace", "Justice", and "Freedom". A few weeks later Brit army armored vehicles destroyed it in a spiteful raid, leaving the crushed remains behind, including a small statue of Christ, a tricolor, and little flags of Ulster, Connacht, Munster and Leinster, with the tracks of army saracens clearly imbedded in the rubble. The statue was a familiar one in Catholic homes; it was called "Christ in Glory".

The funeral was held on Thursday, although the Catholic Church refused Bobby a concelebrated Mass. The church service was held at St Luke’s, close to the Sands’ house.

100,000 mourners march in silence

It seems improbable that over 100,000 human beings could do anything in almost total silence, but that Thursday in May, as the funeral made its way from the Twinbrook estate on the outskirts of Belfast, near where Bobby was arrested on an IRA operation and sent to prison for the last time, through the streets and passed the Brit/RUC barracks and checkpoints along the route to Milltown cemetery, there was an eery silence broken only by the sound of a single piper. The procession flowed behind Bobby’s coffin with a terrible slowness and solemnity. Viewed from a distance approaching the cemetery, it seemed to sway back and forth like a living thing, one hundred thousand of a single mind. It was pouring rain.

The most prominent feature in the neighborhood around Milltown cemetery was a huge Brit/RUC base with tall surveillance towers bristling with sound detecting equipment and spy cameras. The procession passed by the Brit soldiers and RUC shock troops in their battle dress green and black, lonely in a land as foreign to them as, let’s say, India or South Africa might have been for a previous generation of them, behind their perimeter walls and concreted fortress. The procession of mourners poured through the cemetery gates to the Republican plot where Bobby was to be laid to rest in the simplest of graves that he would share with two other Volunteers. Just like Bobby.

A simple grave among tiny white stones

He never, ever thought he was special: just an ordinary man inspired to do an extraordinary thing, like so many other ordinary men and women who did their "wack". You could pass by the grave site today just as easily as find it. There are no signs to lead the visitor to it, no monument, but only the simple grave stone a few inches off the ground inclined at an angle, nothing special at all.

Except that occasionally the little white stones which cover the grave have to be replaced. For twenty years people have been bending down without thinking to put a few into their pockets to take home to every corner of the earth, where now there are hundreds of thousands of little honored places in living rooms and bed rooms where Bobby Sands lives.

Owen Carron, Bobby’s election agent during the Fermanagh/South Tyrone campaign for parliament, gave the funeral oration. "Bobby Sands, your sacrifice will not be in vain," he said. The tricolor, black beret and gloves that were draped over the coffin were given to Bobby’s mother, Rosaleen. His son Gerard looked on as the father he never knew was put into the earth. The family shoveled clumps of it on top of the coffin. Gerard, who was eight years old, needed help with the spade.

Brit "Spearhead Battalion" ordered into the north

Meanwhile in London the Brit secretary of state was saying, "Is murder any less murder because the person responsible claims he had a political motive? The answer is no." He ordered the British army’s elite Spearhead battalion stationed in England to the north as the nationalist ghettos erupted in violent protest.

Inside

Inside The Kesh, the men in the various wings held their own ceremonies when the screws left them locked up alone at night. It was mostly very formal and appropriately military in tone for a fallen soldier, but they also told stories of how Bobby did this or that, or how special he was in his own way. How he would teach the Irish language to his cellmates and then expect them to teach others less advanced. How he would organize singsongs and political debates. How stubborn he could be when the thought he was right about some sports or entertainment trivia [particularly when he wasn’t]. How much he loved his family and how generous he was to make others feel good about themselves. How he was seemingly tireless in his single-minded dedication to his people, his comrades and Ireland’s cause. How human he was.

"I fought a monster today"

Bobby inspired thousands through his songs, poems and writings long before he died on hunger strike. I think he wrote to inspire himself as well, to find within himself the courage to not just survive but fight the British monster head on.

On October 7th, 1978, the following piece was smuggled out of The Kesh and published in the Republican News under the pen name Marcella, Bobby’s sister’s name.

This how it concludes:

"My body is broken and cold. I’m lonely and I need comfort. From somewhere afar I hear those familiar voices which keep me going: ‘We are with you, son. We are with you. Don’t let them beat you.’

"I need to hear those voices. They anger the monster. I retreats. The voices scare the devils. Sometimes I really long to hear those voices. I know if they shout louder they will scare the monster away and my suffering will be ended.

"I remember, and I shall never forget, how this monster took the lives of Tom Ashe, Terence MacSwiney, Michael Gaughan, Frank Stagg, and Hugh Coney, and I wonder each night what the monster and his black devils will do to me tomorrow.

"They always have something new. Will I overcome it? I must. Yes, I must. Tomorrow will be my seven hundred and fortieth day of torture -- an eternity. Yes, tomorrow I’ll rise in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh. Yes, tomorrow I’ll fight the monster and his devils again!"

The Blanketmen’s thoughts turn to Frank Hughes

As the men inside the H-Blocks honored Bobby’s memory, it was also impossible not to think about Frank, dying himself in the prison hospital, and Patsy and Raymond as well. The two weeks lead time between Bobby and Francis Hughes going on hunger strike now seemed like a good idea. But was enough to save his life?

Next: Francis Hughes of South Derry: "Up the Provos!"