Robert Gerard Sands, commonly known as Bobby Sands (March 9, 1954–May 5, 1981) was an Irish republican who died on hunger strike in HM Maze prison, Northern Ireland.
Bobby Sands was born in Rathcoole, Belfast, Northern Ireland and brought up in Abbots Cross, in north Belfast, having to move several times due to intimidation from loyalists. On leaving school, he became an apprentice coach-builder. In 1972 he joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army, but later that year he was interned and remained in custody without trial until 1976.
On his release, he returned to his family in Twinbrook in west Belfast where he became a community activist. He had been out of prison for only a year when he was arrested. Although the most serious charges against him were dismissed, he was convicted of possession of firearms in September 1977 and sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment.
He served his prison term in one of the wings of the Maze Prison known, from their floor plans, as H-Blocks. In prison, Sands became a writer both of journalism and poetry which was published in the Irish republican newspaper An Phoblacht/Republican News. In late 1980 Sands was chosen as Officer Commanding IRA prisoners in the Maze prison.
There had been a series of protests organised by IRA prisoners who sought to be recognized as political prisoners and not subject to full prison regulations, starting with the 'blanket protest' in 1976. The 'dirty protest' in 1978 saw prisoners deliberately live in squalor by smearing excrement on the walls. There had been an earlier aborted hunger strike in autumn 1980.
The Second Hunger Strike started with Sands refusing food on 1 March 1981. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals in order to maximise publicity with prisoners steadily deteriorating and dying successively over several months.
Shortly after the beginning of the strike, the independent Irish republican MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone died and precipitated a by-election. Sands was nominated as an anti-H-Block candidate, and won the seat on April 9, 1981 with 30,492 votes to 29,046 for the Unionist candidate Harry West .
Three weeks later, Sands died from starvation in the prison hospital. The announcement of his death prompted several days of riots in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. Over 75,000 people lined the route of his funeral.
Nine other members who were involved in the Hunger Strike also died shortly after Bobby Sands. Most Irish Republicans and IRA sympathizers regard Bobby Sands and the other nine men as being brave heroes who stood firm against the intransigence of the British Government, although to Unionists he remains a hate figure and an unsympathetic one even for centrists and moderate Nationalists.
The media coverage that surrounded the death of Bobby Sands resulted in a new surge of IRA activity, with the group obtaining many more members. It also prompted the Republican movement to move towards electoral politics, and indirectly paved the way for the Good Friday Agreement many years later.
