Sands of Time

By Anne Cadwallader

BELFAST — Despite the postponement of the national demonstration to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1981 hunger strikes, it’s clear that in nationalist areas in Northern Ireland the memory of those dark days remain fresh.

Huge black "H" memorials, with portraits of the 10 men who died, have been erected at major junctions throughout Belfast and Derry. In rural villages, especially those where any of the hunger strikers lived, memorial ceremonies are planned.

At universities on both sides of the border, young people, many of whom weren’t born at the time, are taking part in political meetings and discussions on the subject.

The theme from Sinn Fein is that the 1981 hunger-strikes were, to the generation of republicans who lived through them, the equivalent of the 1916 Rising of an earlier generation.

The hunger strikes began after a long prison protest had failed to stop the British government’s policy of ending special-category status granted in 1972. They were demanding the return of privileges won then that allowed them to wear their own clothes at all times, associate freely, be exempt from prison work, organize their own education and recreational activities and have prison remission (removed because of the protests) restored. Ten died — seven IRA and three INLA members.

Oliver Hughes is the brother of Frances Hughes, from Bellaghy, Co. Derry, who became the second to die, after Bobby Sands, on May 12, 1981, on the 59th day of his fast.

"For the families", he said, "there was a tragic loss, but it united the nationalist people. The republican leadership had not wanted the hunger strike, but it gave republicanism in Ireland a completely new meaning.

"The war has served its purpose. we’re into a new era entirely. The sacrifice that made that possible was not made by my brother or even 10 individuals but by the whole republican movement."

"Change has come at an enormous cost brought about by the suffering and death of the nationalist people. I would not want anyone to do anything foolish now to squander the gains we have made."

Colm Scullion, also from Bellaghy, was the last man alive to share a cell with Sands. "Bobby was a deep thinker, but always cheerful," he said. "Whenever he would come into a room, the mood would lift. He loved Irish music and had a great singing voice and telling stories.

"I remember a poem he wrote about the Famine, with one verse for each of the four provinces. It was never written down anywhere else. When Bobby volunteered for the hunger strike, he was already thinking ahead to his own dying."

Eventually, Sands was taken to the prison hospital, where he died on May 5. "We heard it on a radio new flash about a couple of minutes later," Scullion said. "It was our worst nightmare come true. There was a long of anger that night. But it made people aware of the struggle and of the causes of the violence, the roots of it back in civil rights days. A lot of progress has been made since then."

Laurence McKeown, 44, from Belfast, went without food for 70 days — more than any other survivor of the 1981 hunger strike.

"I’ve read all the nonsense that we had some crazy idea about a holy ‘blood sacrifice,’ " he said. "What those writers fail to comprehend is that we had all gone through five years of living on the blanket and the no-wash protest.

"The hunger strike was an inevitability, given Maggie Thatcher’s stand on republican prisoners. It simply could not be avoided."

McKeown believes the hunger strike was a watershed. "Republicans are capable of adapting new skills to new situations. No-one in the republican leadership believes the Good Friday agreement is an end in itself".

"Tomboy" Loudon regards himself as one of Sands’s best friends. They spent 12 years behind bars together but first met when he came visiting his girlfriend, who later became his wife, in north Belfast.

Loudon saw his friend for the last time on April 7, Sands’s birthday.

"I heard the screws calling for a van to bring Bobby to the hospital," Loudon said. "I knew this was probably going to be the last time I ever saw him and made an excuse so that I could say goodbye. I was wrecked because I knew that Bobby was going to die and this would be our last time together."

Although most of the families of the ten hunger-strikers of 1981 who died are fully supportive of the present Sinn Fein leadership, this is not true of all of them. Bobby Sands’s sister, Bernadette Sands McKevitt, is among the most high-profile dissenter.

She is not alone, however. One of those who took part in the 1980 hunger strike, which was called off when the prisoners believed the British government had made concessions, and who is now a prominent opponent of the Good Friday agreement, is Tommy McKearney.

McKearney, whom even his detractors will concede is a convincing advocate for his political views, was 27 when he lay at the point of death in the prison hospital at the Maze Jail.

His life was saved when the then officer commanding the republican prisoners, Brendan "The Dark" Hughes, believed the British had made significant concessions and called the strike off.

"I had spent six weeks in the prison hospital and was barely conscious," he said. "I had been drifting for several days. My optic nerve has been permanently damaged. It took me about 18 months to get back to normal."

Now a worker for Expac (the ex-prisoners assistance committee) in County Monaghan, McKearney he is also a founding member of the Irish Republican Writers Group and a writer for its newsletter, Fourthwrite, which opposes the position of the Sinn Fein leadership.

He regards the agreement as so fundamentally compromised to render it impotent as a vehicle for democratic change in the North. "So long as unionism has a fall-back position on the continuity of the union with Britain, unionism will not change," he said.

"This is not a nationalist argument, but a democratic one. You cannot carve out a little corner of a country and hand power to one community. The two communities will have to meet each other halfway if there is to be a stable agreement."

€

A hunger strike commemoriative painting "I nDil Chuimhne" (In Loving Memory) will be unveiled on Saturday, May 5, at 11 a.m. at 124th Street, between Second and Third Avenues, in Manhattan.