Behind the wire, detainees live like POWs, allowed to wear their own clothes, mix freely with their comrades and run their own regime. Arms training practised with wooden guns.
Lectures on guerrilla warfare by inmates. Detainees regard themselves as political prisoners because their political aim is to re-unify Ireland - by armed force. The most violent year of the so-called "Troubles". Nearly killed including over civilians and members of the security forces.
The year opens with "Bloody Sunday" on 30 January when Paratroopers shoot dead 13 innocent Catholic civil rights marchers. The Unionist-dominated Parliament at Stormont is abolished and direct rule imposed from Westminster, headed by a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Prisoners in Belfast's Crumlin Road jail go on hunger strike demanding "political" status, with the same privileges enjoyed by their comrades detained in Long Kesh.
By then 40 other prisoners have joined him. Fearing violence on the streets should McKee die, Northern Ireland Secretary William Whitelaw makes concessions including the right for prisoners to wear their own clothes.
The government calls it "special category status", refusing to call it "political status". The talks fail. The government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson abolishes special category status and introduces a policy of "criminalisation" - using due process of law to arrest terrorist suspects and try them before special non-jury courts, presided over by a single judge. They're then to be sentenced to the new, specially built, high security H Blocks - so-named because of their shape.
Long Kesh is renamed the Maze prison. IRA prisoners refuse to put on prison uniform and wear prison blankets instead. They make five demands, including the right to wear their own clothes and privileges regarding work, education, visits, and free association outside cells. The government shows no sign of giving in. Prisoners then escalate the protest, refusing to slop out the chamber pots in their cells - they daub excreta on the walls and pour urine under the cell doors.
They live like this for three years. The prisoners press the nuclear button. The first hunger strike begins when seven prisoners refuse food. They call off the strike after 53 days just as one of their number is on the brink of dying. They are led to believe they are about to get their own clothes - the crunch issue in the confrontation.
Families deliver them to the prison but they are never given to the prisoners. March: Bobby Sands, the leader of the IRA in the prison, goes on hunger strike, making clear he intends starve himself to death. Nine other Republican prisoners join him.
Mrs Thatcher makes it clear there will be no compromise. May: Sands dies after 66 days on hunger strike. Around , mourners attend his funeral. August: A 10th hunger striker dies. October: Families begin directing medical attention to save the lives of their sons still on hunger strike.
James Prior becomes Northern Ireland Secretary. The strike ends and compromises are agreed. Prisoners get their own clothes and gradually the restoration of other privileges. He becomes president of Sinn Fein later in the year. IRA ceasefire, followed six weeks later by Loyalist paramilitary ceasefires.
Good Friday Agreement signed by all parties to the conflict. Brexit - the UK leaves the European Union. Sinn Fein becomes the largest political party on the island of Ireland. To avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, a notional customs border is placed in the Irish Sea, setting a trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Peter Taylor has been reporting on Northern Ireland since Image source, PA Media. Image source, Getty Images. A poster shows hunger striker Brendan Hughes gaunt-faced and wrapped in a blanket. His ties to the movement soon captured the attention of the authorities, and later that year, he was arrested and charged with possessing firearms in his house.
He spent the next three years of his life in prison. Upon his release, Sands immediately returned to the Republican Movement. He signed on as a community activist in Belfast's rough Twinbrook area, quickly becoming a popular go-to person for a range of issues affecting the neighborhood. In late , authorities arrested Sands again, this time in connection with a bombing that had taken place at a large furniture company and an ensuing gun battle. After weathering a brutal interrogation and then a court proceeding that offered up questionable evidence connecting Sands and three others to the attack, a judge sentenced Sands to 14 years in prison at Her Majesty's Prison's Maze, a facility used to house Republican prisoners from until , located just outside of Belfast.
As a prisoner, Sands's stature only grew. He pushed hard for prison reforms, confronting authorities, and for his outspoken ways he was frequently given solitary confinement sentences. Sands's contention was that he and others like him, who were serving prison sentences, were actually prisoners of war, not criminals as the British government insisted. Beginning on March 1, , Sands led nine other Republican prisoners into the H Block section of the Maze prison, on a hunger strike that would last until death.
Their demands ranged from allowing prisoners to wear their own clothes to permitting visits and mail, all of which were central in improving the inmates' way of life. Unable to move authorities to give in to his requests, and unwilling himself to end his hunger strike, Sands's health began to deteriorate. During the first 17 days of the strike alone, he lost 16 pounds. Only days after slipping into a coma, on the morning of May 5, , Sands died from malnutrition due to starvation.
He was 27 years old and had refused to eat for 66 days. He'd become so fragile over his final weeks, he spent his final days on a water bed to protect his deteriorating and fragile body. At time of his death, Sands was married to Geraldine Noade, with whom he had one son, Gerard.
During the next few years, from his cell in the Maze, he joined other imprisoned IRA terrorists in protests demanding restoration of the freedoms they had previously enjoyed under special category status. In , a hunger strike lasted 53 days before it was called off when one of the protesters fell into a coma. In response, the British government offered a few concessions to the prisoners, but they failed to deliver all they had promised and protests resumed.
Sands did not take a direct part in the strike, but he acted as the IRA-appointed leader and spokesperson of the protesting prisoners. On March 1, —the fifth anniversary of the British policy of criminalization—Bobby Sands launched a new hunger strike.
He took only water and salt, and his weight dropped from pounds to 95 pounds. After two weeks, another protester joined the strike, and six days after that, two more. Parliament subsequently introduced legislation to disqualify convicts serving prison sentences for eligibility for Parliament. He refused. On May 3, he fell into a coma, and in the early morning of May 5 he died. Fighting raged for days in Belfast, and tens of thousands attended his funeral on May 7.
Prisoners were also allowed to move more freely and no longer were subject to harsh penalties for refusing prison work. Official recognition of their political status, however, was not granted. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Young strikes out eight of the 27 batters he faces and benefits from excellent defense in a game that is On May 5, , a date of symbolic importance to its iconic creator, the perfume Chanel No.
0コメント