Diaries of Bobby Sands republished in Colin Firth’s new “The People Speak” project

Woundedknee. With respect you can hardly call any of the brave Hungerstrikers fools. Had they known what the leadership on the outside where at behind their backs and went along with it, the word fools would be mild in the extreme.

Dan: And the Unionists forced half a million Catholic/Nationalists into a state they wanted no part of. And that state included large areas that had (at the time), a Catholic/Nationalist majority. Tyrone, Fermanagh, south Armagh, west Derry. You always seem to overlook that part of the story.

Jaysus are you thick Wounded-After the death's at Kent State,it took three years to end the Viet Nam war,rarely is there one seminal event that causes a change,but Sand's death did cause Thatcher to rethink a lot of things-she said so herself!Go take your insignificant blather elsewhere!You make little sense!

thetint --I'm familiar with that quote. But here's the point. The hunger strike ended in September 1981 with ten men dead and no concessions from the British. Yet over the subsequent year or two the prisoners achieved pretty much all of their demands. Quietly, without confrontation. So what was served by the death of Sands, Hughes etc? Sands was only a few years older than me, he'd still be a relatively young man if he had survived. Who knows what he could have contributed? He was an intelligent man, though lacking in formal schooling. And what happened subsequently to his wife and child? I don't know, but I'll bet loudmouths like murph and seanomel here never gave a dime to help bring up Sands' child. Joe McDonnell had a really beautiful and strong wife. Two children also, if I remember correctly. I think Joe's sacrifice was extraordinary, because he led the second wave of hunger strikers, who could see that the deaths of the first wave had yielded nothing. He looked death in the face, even tho he had so much to live for. Joe was a brave man, far braver than me. But he was a fool, because he left his children orphaned and his loving wife widowed just to put Gerry Adams and McGuinness in big jobs. There's nothing original about what I'm saying. Other H Block survivors such as Brendan Hughes came to believe the same thing.

Murph, if you were old enough to go to Vietnam you were old enough to go to Ireland for the H Block struggle that you now claim to be so concerned about. I was too young for the Vietnam War, but I am proud of my father, who opposed the crazy War and took steps to make sure he didn't get involved in killing people he had no quarrel with.

WoundedKnee-I went in the second largest draft of the Viet Nam war-b4 you call me a fat ass,I'm betting you have never served your country so.Guys like you are a dime a dozen,all full of blather and no substance.Pog Ma Thoin!

Regarding the comment of WoundedKnee that the cause was lost. When Chinese revolutionary Zhou Enlai was asked the significance of the French Revolution of 1789 – he replied ‘It is too soon to say.’

If "Bobby Sands was part of a failed attempt to coerce northern unionists into a socialist [sic] entity...", might the omitted text in this statement have gone on to mention the inconvenient truth that this may have been not historically unrelated to Eddie Carson's earlier failed attempt to coerce Irish Catholic/nationalist/republicans to stay in a democratically-challenged imperialist entity? If the 26 county proto-republic statelet was a socialist (sic) entity, the world is surely safe for capitalism - though the attempt to exploit fears of republican Irish-America is duly noted! PS "... voting franchise across the UK was extended to all males in 1918 ..." as long as they were property owning rate payers, which in the case of the 6 county NI neo-provincial statlet subsequently, usually meant Protestants only. Which remained the case up until the 1960s. NB A new book by Guardian journalist Ian Cobain (2012) - "Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture", was reviewed in The Irish Times at the weekend, two chapters of which deal with such in NI.

Murph, seanomel and other dopes: I went over to Ireland in May 1981 to try to do my bit for the H Block cause and stayed there till Joe McDonnell's death and the Battle of the British Embassy showed that the cause was lost. What did YOU do that year? And if you say you were too young, are you going to claim that you would have done as I did? Like hell you would--you're keyboard militants and virtual activists. You couldn't get off your fat asses.

Lest we forget

Bobby Sands MP hero

curtis...exactly what the eff are you on about?

curtisjohnson@ What in Gods Name, would the Unionist`s ever have to do, with the INLA, The CPI, Sinn Fein, or Bobby Sands ?

With the company Bobby Sands kept; He need not Turn in his Grave, over this Capitalist Globalizationist Zionist Exploitationist Biography Fiasco ~

"Northern unionists" are already part of a proto-bolshevik socialist/plutocratic hybrid entity, the british terror state.