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Bobby Sands, MP: IRA Volunteer and Revolutionary Icon
Nothing but an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation, by Denis O'Hearn. New York, NY: Nation Books, 2006. 434 pp. $28.00 cloth. ISBN: 156025842X.
Twenty-six years ago this spring, IRA prisoner and hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected to represent Fermanagh/South Tyrone at Westminster. His supporters hoped the election would lead to political status for paramilitary prisoners in Northern Ireland. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's response was, "A crime is a crime is a crime" (p. 358). Sands died after 66 days without food - emaciated, his fillings having fallen out, his organs shut down, and the whites of his eyes turned orange from toxins released. Nine others died on the fast and over a long summer, Irish politics were transformed. A mass mobilization of Irish Nationalists, the embracement of constitutional politics by Provisional Irish Republicans, and the Irish peace process all flow from Sands's election. In Nothing but an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, The Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation, Denis O'Hearn has drawn on interviews, published and unpublished writings, court records, "comms" between the prisoners and the outside, and other sources, to present an in-depth account of how Bobby Sands became a revolutionary icon.
O'Hearn chronicles Sands's early life in Belfast, as he moved from typical teenage activities to the clandestine life of an urban guerrilla. Sands's operational career was brief; he joined the IRA late in 1971 and by the end of 1972 was in jail for armed robbery; while awaiting trial, he married his pregnant girlfriend. He ended up in the "cages" of Long Kesh under a regime that recognized the political nature of IRA activity. And he formed close ties with people who remained important throughout his life, including Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, and Seanna Walsh. Encouraged by Adams and Hughes, Sands and his younger comrades examined their situation, read radical authors like Che Guevara, and became more political and revolutionary.
Sands was released from prison in 1976, rejoined the IRA and his family, and became active in community politics. Six months later, he was arrested as bombs went off in a furniture store, an economic target. His marriage fell apart and he re-entered a...