Remember the photos in Life magazine when these guys starved themselves to death at the Maze prison?

[NNN0LHI]

I can remember the photos as nothing less than horrifying back in 1981. I was just thinking about this incident the other day for some reason. It is something that will always stay with me.

http://media.www.berkeleybeacon.com/media/storage/paper169/news/2009/04/09/ArtsAndEntertainment/Starvation.Or.Submission.Hunger.Tells.The.True.Story.Of.Bobby.Sands-3703537.shtml

Starvation or submission? Hunger tells the true story of Bobby Sands

With bold, and at times unbearable clarity, McQueen captures the horrors of "the Troubles" in 1981

Steve Miller
Issue date: 4/9/09 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Hunger is not a movie you will feel good about afterwards.

It is so brutally real that, at times, it is hard to watch. However, it's what makes Hunger such a cohesive movie, because in order to truthfully portray the events the film is based on, the utmost honesty must be exercised.

Hunger tells the story of Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), an incarcerated Irish Republican Army soldier who leads a controversial hunger strike.

The movie is set in 1981 at the height of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, which pitted Catholic Irish nationalists, led by the IRA, against Protestant British residents and police officers. snip

Hunger makes no statement as to whether the hunger strike was martyrdom, protest or suicide. Bobby Sands and the nine other men who suffered with him may have been courageous, or they may have been recklessly fanatical.

Either way, Hunger is a memorable portrayal of Bobby Sands' relentless struggle for freedom at any and all costs.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

1. Prepare for this to turn into a giant flame war

With people asking you if you like Osama bin Laden, too.

[NNN0LHI]

2. And why do I hate Merca?

:rofl:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

4. Yeah, pretty much

[cali]

5. I'm afraid you'll be really disappointed. I highly doubt this will turn into a

flame war.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

6. Considering I've had people attack me in threads over my sig line for no reason

I wouldn't be surprised if this thread flames up.

I mean, I was in a thread about pubes, and I got attacked for having a bobby sands avatar.

[sinkingfeeling]

10. See post #7. Could one ask if we're allowed to compare the imperalistic British occupiers

to the imperalistic invaders of Iraq?

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

13. At least this thread is about Bobby Sands

And not pubes.

Sadly, I'm not joking.

[H2O Man]

23. I like that picture.

It's nice.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

24. Thank you

[H2O Man]

25. And you.

My wife's cousin knew him. Used to travel back and forth between this country and the Old Sod to see him. He made me some nice tapes of Bobby's poetry, and some of the other beautiful, haunting music from Ireland.

My grandfather came here in the year 1879. One of his cousins that stayed worked with Collins, and held an office under de Valera. Before that, going back generations, a few relatives were in the United Irishmen.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

40. That's pretty cool

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

9. Look below

Right on schedule.

[truebrit71]

17. Everytime you defend and idolize a murdering terrorist scumbag..

..people will call you on it...

How "liberal" and "progressive" of you :eyes:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

19. Nom nom

:popcorn:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

32. One of America's greatest progressive herooes was a murdering terrorist scumbag.

Glory, glory hallelujah
His soul goes marching on

[Blue_Tires]

3. I saw that other movie with Helen Mirren

was pretty good....but from a different perspective, of course

[canetoad]

8. 'Some Mother's Son'

Good movie.

[truebrit71]

7. Fuck Bobby Sands and Fuck the IRA...

..bunch of fucking terrorists all of them...no better than Al-Q...

[ourbluenation]

11. or freedom fighters...

Ireland Be Free!

[truebrit71]

14. Just like Osama....

:eyes:

He was a coward and a murdering terrorist..and ANYONE that idolizes that miserable piece of wormfood needs their fucking head examined...

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

15. Oh man, it's like a script

:rofl:

[truebrit71]

16. Yup....you immortalize a murdering scumbag...

...and surprise, surprise someone takes you to task for it...

What is it about "terrorist" you don't understand?

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

18. Nom nom

:popcorn:

[ourbluenation]

22. everyone, even Sands, is more than one thing...

Sunday 1st

I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.

My heart is very sore because I know that I have broken my poor mother’s heart, and my home is struck with unbearable anxiety. But I have considered all the arguments and tried every means to avoid what has become the unavoidable: it has been forced upon me and my comrades by four-and-a-half years of stark inhumanity.

I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.

I believe and stand by the God-given right of the Irish nation to sovereign independence, and the right of any Irishman or woman to assert this right in armed revolution. That is why I am incarcerated, naked and tortured.

Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought that there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.

I believe I am but another of those wretched Irishmen born of a risen generation with a deeply rooted and unquenchable desire for freedom. I am dying not just to attempt to end the barbarity of H-Block, or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner, but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed whom I am deeply proud to know as the ‘risen people’.

There is no sensation today, no novelty that October 27th brought. (The starting date of the original seven man hunger-strike) The usual Screws were not working. The slobbers and would-be despots no doubt will be back again tomorrow, bright and early.

I wrote some more notes to the girls in Armagh today. There is so much I would like to say about them, about their courage, determination and unquenchable spirit of resistance. They are to be what Countess Markievicz, Anne Devlin, Mary Ann McCracken, Marie MacSwiney, Betsy Gray, and those other Irish heroines are to us all. And, of course, I think of Ann Parker, Laura Crawford, Rosemary Bleakeley, and I’m ashamed to say I cannot remember all their sacred names.

Mass was solemn, the lads as ever brilliant. I ate the statutory weekly bit of fruit last night. As fate had it, it was an orange, and the final irony, it was bitter. The food is being left at the door. My portions, as expected, are quite larger than usual, or those which my cell-mate Malachy is getting.

[ourbluenation]

20. +

Van Dieman's land is a hell for a man
To live out his life in slavery
Where the climate is raw and the gun makes the law
Neither wind nor rain cares for bravery
Twenty years have gone by and I've ended my bond
My comrades' ghosts walk behind me
A rebel I came and I'm still the same
On the cold winds of night you will find me

[Jackeens]

26. Just curious, do you regard the Bloody Sunday killers as terrorists too?

Or the Shankill Butchers?

That's the point: there were 'murderers'/'terrorists'/'freedom fighters'/'patriots' on all sides of the conflict, how you described them depended on which side you were on. And I've yet to meet an Irish/British man who wasn't on one side or the other when the tension was its height.

For me Bobby Sands was a hero, but that's because I was on his 'side'. That's what the conflict did to us all.

[hlthe2b]

27. I'd be willing to bet that you know very little of the history of that

time... despite your protests to the contrary, I'd absolutely bet. This is not a black and white issue and those whose kneejerk tendencies want to make it so, reveal themselves.

On edit, if you are really British, per your screen name, that would offer some explanation... As someone else posted here, at least a million Brits would agree with you and likewise, at least a million Irish would disagree just as passionately. Among Americans (which is likely a stark minority), I'd bet it might be similarly split.

[Jackeens]

28. delete

[hlthe2b]

29. Why are you answering for TrueBrit1?

[Jackeens]

30. I apologise, I thought you were addressing me - sorry again!

[hlthe2b]

33. No problem... 'just confused

;)

[Jackeens]

34. Me too.

:blush:

[truebrit71]

36. Really? How much would you like to bet?

I have VIVID memories of "that time" being born and raised in the UK...I am VERY well aware of the cowardice that sands and his kind displayed...

[Jackeens]

37. And the RUC, UDR, UDA, UFF, UVF, B Specials, MI5, British Army (Bloody Sunday), etc, etc, etc.....

....everyone had blood on their hands. Everyone. For example, you do know British 'Intelligence' colluded in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, don't you? As for Bloody Sunday......

[ourbluenation]

39. but you weren't the oppressed minority in your own country. Try that one on for size.

and "freedom fighter" certainly seems to fit. My father grew up in the temporarily occupied portion of his country. British troops took his home and scattered he and his brothers and sisters to the wind. Turned the house into afort, paved over everything. On a family vacation at my uncles, I got to witness British troops holding my dad and mom up against a wall at gunpoint in their scivvys. My uncle was gunned down at his front door by some orangemen because his son married a catholic. People can only take that shit for so long.

[uppityperson]

12. Yeah! Send them ALL to gitmo!!!!!!111111

I'm series!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111

[H2O Man]

21. Not.

[Rebubula]

31. Well...

....considering your screenname is TrueBrit71 - your anger is not surprising.

I know of a few million Brits that would agree with you...

I know of a few million Irish that would disagree with you....

[PufPuf23]

35. I was in Hilltown, County Down the night Sands died in 1981

with ex-wife/college sweetheart and had arrived by rented car at the home of my father's elderly first cousin that evening. I was 28. My great grandfather had left for the California gold fields in the 1860s and my grandfather had followed in the 1870's. My Dad's oldest brother (passed away at 99 in 1995) had retained the family connection by mail with a cousin, "Mary Kelly" (ne my surname). I am Irish surnamed and 1/4 Irish and 1/4 Scotch-Irish/English but then knew close to nothing about Irish history and was raised without religion.

The first I had ever heard of Bobby Sands and the "Maze" was the day we entered Northern Ireland. We did did not connect "the Troubles" with our tourism and had not been watching news. We had traveled 8 weeks already, 5 weeks in Greece, the former Yugoslavia and Romania; 2 weeks in Italy and France; and the week driving Ireland. I was fond of Irish folk music because my exe was a classical violinist that fiddled in a Irish folk/American old-time band, the Nearly Gaelic Ceali(sp) Players(Starry Plough, Plough and Stars, Ashkenaz, UC events) while we were at Cal Berkeley. We had arrived at Rosselare by ferry from France and traveled by car along the west coast before cutting across west to east to cross at Dundalk/Newry into Northern Ireland and nearby Hilltown.

"Mary" was in her late 80s and had six adult children, one Agatha and her teen son lived on the family farm outside Hilltown. Agatha was an IRA widow we were to soon find out. Mary was surprised that we were not Catholic and my exe was Jewish. I was equally surprised as being Catholic had never been mentioned in my family (similarly discovered my maternal grandfather was Jewish several years ago long past the deaths of my parents). Mary was the widow of the neighbor's son and they had combined the two farms. Her oldest son Peter lived nearby and farmed the land for seed potatoes (dyed purple by law so they could not be sold as food). They had pictures of JFK and loved the Kennedy's and America. There was a second older house built around 1700 but no longer used that was the original my surname house where my grandfather and great grandfather were born. I have an old quilt that Mary took from a trunk in that house and gave to me.

Talk that first night among the five of us was about Sands and the Troubles and family history. There was a mystery I did not know about my great grandfather. My great grandfather Mathew had owned a store (that still existed in 1981 as the only store in Hilltown) but had sold the multi-generational store to come to California for a better life for his family; they were to follow once he was established. After several years they never heard from him; he had abandoned his wife and children. My grandfather Patrick as a young man found himself in "political" trouble and came to California to find his father and was successful. The one photo I have of my great grandfather was a posed studio shot circa 1880 in a Eureka photo studio given me (along with a manufactured negative) by Mary after the visit. Later I was to see the same photo in historical photography exhibits in Humboldt county. Mathew is buried at Hamburg and Patrick at Orleans, both Klamath River gold mining communities in the late 1800s. Patrick had two brothers that went to Ontario and Australia but those connections had been broken.

That first night in Hilltown, Sands passed on of starvation. There was a general strike called by the IRA upon news that Sands died. Mary's other 5 children (all 40 plus) and their families came to the farm to wait out the strike and view the first returnee from the New World. Most came from Belfast, others from Newry. The news was that everything was shut down under threat by the IRA and road blocks manned by British troops were common. My new met family was unabashedly pro-IRA. The plans we had made just the evening before to travel and visit Belfast et al were dated and Belfast came to us. Each night of the IRA strike, most of went to a pub in Hilltown that was closed by appearances(as were all the businesses because of the IRA strike) but we were let in through the back. There were many acquaintances being updated and singing and drinking (except those who had taken temperance pledges). Lots of anger. There were groups of men who would come in having gone out and vandalized and spray painted businesses and others that had not complied with the strike.

During our stay, we visited, ate, and some drank and stuck to nearby excursions. We visited the local Catholic Pastor and Church and graveyard. We visited the stone ruins of a water powered flax mill where my family had labored on the Mourne River. I have some slates from the roof still. When we made that trip through the country side there was close to zero traffic on the road and we were overflown by a Brit helicopter that set on the field 1/2 mile ahead and soldiers blocked the road. I was driving the rental car with Republic of Ireland plates. The young soldier was trembling when we spoke. I was asked who we were and what we were doing. The tension disappeared and turned to chuckling when I said in my obvious American accent that we were tourists from California headed to the old flax mill. Another outing was that a group of us hiked to the top of Mourne Mountain. There is a large rock -- I cannot recall the name -- perched on a ridge where the myth was that a giant had thrown across the water; the IRA had been there recently and the rock was defaced with paint.

We had hotel reservations for several nights in Dublin, tickets for the hydrofoil to England, and Dublin was the drop off point for the rental car. Unfortunately our day of travel was also the day of Bobby Sands funeral. Mary et al followed us in another car to get us safely to the border. There was essentially no other traffic nor people in the streets once we reached Newry. We went through three military checkpoints including the border. It took all day just to get to Dublin because of the funeral parades in each town. Central Dublin was so packed in the streets that we abandoned the car and walked thru the crowds with our luggage to the car drop-off. There we changed plans and went on an airport shuttle that evening to the airport and flew to London.

I have been back to Europe twice but never with the extended time and never to Ireland. I continued to write to Mary but she passed away not much later and then I corresponded with Agatha. When Mary had passed on, Peter, the oldest son, had decided the farm should be sold and there was disagreement among siblings, mostly Agatha and her son who had lived there with Mary. I divorced in 1985 and moved several times as did Agatha and we lost contact.

Idealistically, I would be for one Ireland but that is far out of the tube. I get that one side of my Irish family was oppressed and one was on the side of the oppressors historically. That was the only experience in my life with troops on the street and with people who had lived their lives in conflict. I would hate to see that happen in the USA.

[Jackeens]

38. What a beautiful account of that time, PufPuf23 - brings so much of it back. Breathtaking.

Thank you.