On this day in 1981 Bobby Sands began his Hunger Strike

marienbad

rockatansky wrote: »

By Gerry Adams and Martin Mcguinness serving as MLA's and Ministers in the Power Sharing executive. All other political leaders from the past 30 years North, South and in the UK have fallen by the wayside (With the exception of Peter Robinson, but lets be honest he's not exactly on stabr ground is he). They are left standing.

The IRA decommissioning of their arsenal again without any major split in the ranks. Sinn Feins continued political growth where they stand a very good chance of being the largest party in the 6 counties, as well as potentially being the largest party in opposition in the South.

That is not answering what I asked though , how can you attribute the above to Bobby Sands and not the death of the two boys or possibly even both ?

rockatansky

marienbad wrote: »

That is not answering what I asked though , how can you attribute the above to Bobby Sands and not the death of the two boys or possibly even both ?

I'm sorry but I believe that my first paragraph clearly answers your question

Bobby Sands (along with the other hunger strikers) running for and winning a seat in the Westminster elections (and Dail) strengthened the position of those in the Republican Community that believed it was vital that a strong Political base was maintained and grown in strength in parallel with the military wing. It helped solidify Gerry Adams position that would enable him to bring the vast majority of the Republican movement along with him and Sinn Fein during the Good Friday Negotiations.


Without this realisation of the political support that existed and that became evident through the hunger strikes and eventual election wins, the positions of Adams would have been alot weaker when coming up against those in his own community who rejected the political path as a viable option. You would have had different leaders emerging which would have caused larger splits and many different groups, as is clearly evident with Loyalism and its current lack of political leadership.

marienbad

rockatansky wrote: »

I'm sorry but I believe that my first paragraph clearly answers your question

Bobby Sands (along with the other hunger strikers) running for and winning a seat in the Westminster elections (and Dail) strengthened the position of those in the Republican Community that believed it was vital that a strong Political base was maintained and grown in strength in parallel with the military wing. It helped solidify Gerry Adams position that would enable him to bring the vast majority of the Republican movement along with him and Sinn Fein during the Good Friday Negotiations.


Without this realisation of the political support that existed and that became evident through the hunger strikes and eventual election wins, the positions of Adams would have been alot weaker when coming up against those in his own community who rejected the political path as a viable option. You would have had different leaders emerging which would have caused larger splits and many different groups, as is clearly evident with Loyalism.

That is just opinion though - looking at what happened and then saying why you think it happened .

Remember your statement was ''their actions played a much bigger part ....''

rockatansky

marienbad wrote: »

That is just opinion though - looking at what happened and then saying why you think it happened .

Remember your statement was ''their actions played a much bigger part ....''

Sorry but which part is just my opinion? Can you point out where you feel I am wrong?

marienbad

rockatansky wrote: »

Sorry but which part is just my opinion? Can you point out where you feel I am wrong?

Your statement was this

''Their actions played a much bigger part than the fallout of the Warrington Bombings in terms of the Peace Process''

I asked how did you measure that , reciting what actually happened is not answering what I asked .

rockatansky

marienbad wrote: »

Your statement was this

''Their actions played a much bigger part than the fallout of the Warrington Bombings in terms of the Peace Process''

I asked how did you measure that , reciting what actually happened is not answering what I asked .

And I clearly answered you how I measured that, by current position and growing strength of the Provisional Leadership??

marienbad

rockatansky wrote: »

And I clearly answered you how I measured that, by current position and growing strength of the Provisional Leadership??

That is not an answer. You pick an episode in history, lets say x, and state it caused y, and give no reason for it.

Life and history is not that simple .

rockatansky

marienbad wrote: »

That is not an answer. You pick an episode in history, lets say x, and state it caused y, and give no reason for it.

Life and history is not that simple .

I'm sorry but now you've lost me.

Episode X - Bobby Sands leads a group of prisoners on hunger strike. During this hunger strike he is elected to Westminster. He dies shortly after.

Y - This Caused - Upon realising the success of this election and the subsequent election of Sands Election Agent to the same seat after his death, this caused The leader ship of Sinn Fein to embark on a strategy known as the armalite and ballot box strategy:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armalite_and_ballot_box_strategy

Do I need to go on further or am I wasting my time?

marienbad

rockatansky wrote: »

I'm sorry but now you've lost me.

Episode X - Bobby Sands leads a group of prisoners on hunger strike. During this hunger strike he is elected to Westminster. He dies shortly after.

Y - This Caused - Upon realising the success of this election and the subsequent election of Sands Election Agent to the same seat after his death, this caused The leader ship of Sinn Fein to embark on a strategy known as the armalite and ballot box strategy:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armalite_and_ballot_box_strategy

Do I need to go on further or am I wasting my time?

Your wasting your time . As I say life is not that simple

Jawgap

Sands, McCarron et al ran as 'Anti-H Block' candidates not as SF candidates. Their candidacy was co-ordinated through the 'National H-Block/Armagh Committee.' They advocated that a "campaign on Sands' behalf "ought to be a single issue effort around the theme of special status for all political prisoners with no party labels to be affixed to his candidacy."

In the case of Sands, as the first candidate to go forward, SF were worried he would fail and fail miserably, hence the desire to keep some distance between him and them.

In the end he won, primarily because the vote was a reaction to what was happening, rather than an endorsement of it. He was hugely helped by the fact that the SDLP and the previous incumbent's brother pulled out leaving him in a two-horse contest with a unionist candidate - I'd imagine at the time that most nationalists, in those circumstances, given the choice between a unionist and someone who is not a unionist, would have gone with the someone who is not a unionist.

After McCarron, Ken Maginnis took the seat in the 1983 general election and held it for 18 years.

In essence Sands etc were single issue candidates, like those TDs who occasionally get elected because someone closed the local hospital. As soon as the issue resolved them and their ilk were consigned to oblivion.

Incidentally, the adoption of the "Armalite and the Ballot Box" strategy wasn't driven by the success of Sands election - it was driven by the failure of the hunger strike. Sands election confirmed that an electoral strategy was viable, but the actual decision to adopt it was driven by a range of factors, the defining one being the failure of the hunger strike and the recognition that the British were prepared to sustain a significant military commitment over the long term.

The failure of the hunger strike, in effect, forced the PIRA to realise they would never achieve a military victory.

From Ian McAllister, ‘The Armalite and the ballot box’: Sinn Fein’s electoral strategy in Northern Ireland' Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 123–142

The first prisoner to refuse food, Bobby Sands, was elected to Westminster in April 1981 and two other hunger strikers were elected to the Dail shortly after. When Sands died in June, his funeral attracted massive publicity; in all, 10 men died as a result of the hunger strikers.

While the hunger strikes had generated much public sympathy across Ireland and America, it had not furthered IRA’s goals and had confirmed the view of many of the new generation of IRA leaders that Britain would not withdraw from Northern Ireland in response solely to a military campaign

That led to realisation that an 'integrated' political and military strategy was required.

pedroeibar1

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

It is irrelevant to the OP.
There is no link between this tragedy and the main topic in this thread. There are tragedies on both sides and this is what I refer to when I advise against "unproveable links/ comparisons between victims of both sides". For example do we compare the victims of Bloody Sunday with those of Warrington or Manchester. Fred linked this tragedy to Bobby sands which is a ridiculous and unproveable link. Can that ever be factually proven? of course not. So while listing details as you have above as an extension of Freds point may be seen as empathetic it can be of no assistance to the threads topic, rather it helps those who have been asking for the thread to be closed down in their aim.

You are making the discussion absurd.
Why not ask similar questions regarding Thatcher not allowing prisoners the rights they wanted as against the IRA prisoners work in peace partnership in the 1990's and 2000's?

The answer is that it would be an irrelevant link, nothing to do with this thread, perhaps spurious in an attempt to derail thread, etc.

In looking at the last part of the thread this seems to have been successful which seems to support my initial point about not being helpful, which has been ignored.

JBG,
It is difficult for me to understand how you arrived at your interpretation of what was written by Fred (quote – “Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry played a bigger part in the peace process. The ira bombed themselves in to an untenable position .....The difference being, thanks to the likes of Bobby Sands, they had no say in the matter.”)
From my perspective – and from that of any logical viewer – the clear inference from Fred’s comment is that unlike the actions of Sands the two innocent boys had no control over what happened to them. Their deaths, the culmination of a bombing campaign that was abhorred by the vast majority in the South, created a huge negative impact on public perception of the IRA. It found itself in a lose lose situation.
Nor did I make any attempt, spurious or otherwise, to derail the thread – in fact I repeatedly asked a question of the OP and others to give some example to substantiate their claims. At no time did I mention Bloody Sunday – if you read back over my posts you will see that I wrote of the frustration of the ‘ordinary Southerner’ over the British Government’s mishandling of affairs in N. Irl. and playing into the hands of the IRA. (Widgery, although not mentioned by me is a typical example.)

More recently there has been more off-topic waffle on the electioneering ‘success’ of Sands & Co., which is both inaccurate (unless 2 out of 12 is mathematically counts as success!) and repetitive as has been rebutted by Jawgap and pointed out by me earlier

As for your suggestion that I’m making the discussion absurd, I’d suggest that the opening post already was absurd and subsequent posts by several others brought it out of that level. The OP has not posted on ‘his’ thread for 11 days, has failed miserably to substantiate his stupid claims yet has seen fit to post comments on football and other matters. That suggests that he has run off, tail between legs.

I’m out of this thread, it was absurd.