How will history remember the hunger strikers in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland? (bomb, 80's)
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This is a very sensitive subject for me I just wondered if there was anyone on this board who remembered the hunger strikes and the fact that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher allowed fellow MP Bobby Sands to go 66 days without food before dying. He was 27 years old. On reflection I would like opinions from all nationalities who have an opinion to air them even if they are disparaging ones from any nationality even Brits.
Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals to maximise publicity with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months.
The hunger strike centred on five demands:
the right not to wear a prison uniform;
the right not to do prison work;
the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
the right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;
full restoration of remission lost through the protest. this it seems was his demands.. I never liked Maggie Thatcher, but can you imagine her giving in to this , what then would have happened with other prisoners. It was his and others choice to starve to death. Maybe others might feel differently...
Perhaps we should be more concerned with memorializing the far greater number of soldiers, police officers, and innocent civillians killed and maimed by outright terrorism.
It depends on the country. These events will have a different and much stronger resonance in the UK than elsewhere. In the US, attitudes toward Northern Irish independence groups went from indifferent (with some specific geographic areas of support) in the 1980's to slightly negative after the Omagh bombing to mostly negative after September 11, 2001, when much of what the IRA and other groups did was lumped into the category of "terrorism."
Individual events within the history of the Troubles aren't really assessed separately; it's kind of an all-or-nothing thing, and many people now lean toward "nothing."
The hunger strikes
Well really they were part of the bigger picture weren't they?..the "Troubles' and that great big question which was ...'the damnable question'. The bane of English/Irish history. Better for Ireland to have been 75 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. Her geography sure brought on great suffering.
Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals to maximise publicity with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months.
The hunger strike centred on five demands:
the right not to wear a prison uniform;
the right not to do prison work;
the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
the right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;
full restoration of remission lost through the protest. this it seems was his demands.. I never liked Maggie Thatcher, but can you imagine her giving in to this , what then would have happened with other prisoners. It was his and others choice to starve to death. Maybe others might feel differently...
Agree. He had a choice to live or die, something which those who were murdered by his organization didn't have.
Agree. He had a choice to live or die, something which those who were murdered by his organization didn't have.
Mod cut: Personal attack. Bobby Sands tried to assimilate into a Loyalist community but his sister had a bottle put over her head on the way to school and they were spat at and continuously called 'Fenian Scum'.
By 1966, the sectarian violence in Rathcoole (along with the rest of Belfast) had considerably worsened, and the minority Catholic population there found itself under siege; Bobby and his sisters were forced to run a gauntlet of bottle and rock throwing Protestant youths on the way to Catholic school every morning, and the formerly integrated Rathcoole youth football club banned Catholic members and renamed itself "The Kai", which stood for "Kill All Irish"
He also attempted to co-exist peacefully but discrimination from the Unionists was tragic and the trigger of the troubles. The official IRA had ceased their border campaign in 1969 but the Ulster Unionists used this attempt at compromise as an excuse to attack undefended families hence the old phrase 'IRA I Ran Away' which the braying Unionists painted on walls after burning women and children who they knew were undefended from their houses. Bobby Sands witnessed his house being burned down so easy to moralise when you never grew up in an era dominated by violence and bigotry.
In March and April 1969, there were six bomb attacks on electricity and water infrastructure targets, causing blackouts and water shortages. At first the attacks were blamed on the Irish Republican Army (IRA). In fact, it later emerged that members of the loyalist Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) had carried out the bombings in an attempt to implicate the IRA, destabilise the Government and halt the reforms demanded by the Civil Rights movement and promised by Terence O'Neill.[7]
The Civil Rights Movement were peaceful and had the support from everyone around the world. The Omagh bombing was carried out by a British double agent that is a well known fact.
Mod cut: Personal attack. Terrorism? Northern Ireland was created by threat of conservative and unionist terrorism. The democratic decision by the British Government conceded it was an illegal occupation and that Ireland should be given full independence. Threat of bloodshed and murder of innocent civilians was the only reason six counties were partitioned in a gerrymandered way exactly as Russia are doing in the Crimea now.
Mod cut: Do not speak for other posters. Loyalists waved the flag of apartheid throughout the troubles which tells you everything you need to know about how discriminated the Republican community were against they were even banned from draping the Irish flag over dead family relative's coffins in their own country yeah right, terrorism? Anyone who knows their history knows that Northern Ireland was created by the threat of bloodshed and terrorism by the same British aristocrats that supported the Nazis.
Perhaps we should be more concerned with memorializing the far greater number of soldiers, police officers, and innocent civillians killed and maimed by outright terrorism.
You mean like all the innocent civilians massacred, raped, tortured and having their land stolen by the British over the centuries? Not to mention treated like second class civilians in their own country throughout the 20th Century.
It depends on the country. These events will have a different and much stronger resonance in the UK than elsewhere. In the US, attitudes toward Northern Irish independence groups went from indifferent (with some specific geographic areas of support) in the 1980's to slightly negative after the Omagh bombing to mostly negative after September 11, 2001, when much of what the IRA and other groups did was lumped into the category of "terrorism."
Individual events within the history of the Troubles aren't really assessed separately; it's kind of an all-or-nothing thing, and many people now lean toward "nothing."
Many people in New York and Boston don't.
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