Sands starves to death, and others vow to follow
As British army helicopters clattered anxiously overhead, some 50,000 Northern Irish Catholics lined the streets of Belfast last week for an emotional ceremony that was part funeral, part political demonstration. A lone piper led the way as thousands of mourners followed a Daimler hearse bearing a coffin draped in the green, white and orange flag of the Irish Republic. Beside the hearse strode seven hooded members of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, dressed in mottled green combat jackets and berets.
At Andersonstown Road, in the heart of a Catholic section, the cortege stopped, and the coffin was removed from the hearse. Three more I.R.A. men suddenly appeared with rifles and fired into the air the traditional three volleys of honor and mourning. The procession, discreetly shepherded by police and British troops, moved past Protestant strongholds, where tall screens were erected to prevent even eye contact between the rival sectarian groups.
Finally, at the Milltown Cemetery, the coffin was carried to a special area studded with the graves of more than 200 I.R.A. faithful. Republican Leader Gerry Adams declared: "We will bury our dead with the dignity denied them while living." He added, "The ordinary people of Ireland have turned out to show their solidarity with Bobby Sands. They know that [his] death didn't have to happen."
True enough. But death had come at last to convicted I.R.A. Terrorist and Hunger Striker Robert (Bobby) Gerard Sands, 27, by virtue of his own will. His earthly remains were little more than a husk after a 66-day fast in the H-block section of Northern Ireland's Maze Prison. He was the first I.R.A. member to starve himself to death since 1976, the 13th Irish Nationalist to do so in this century. Sands had failed in his mam aim: to force the British government to grant special political status to himself and 700 other I.R.A. members imprisoned in the Maze. But he had managed to fan Republican passions — and street violence — to levels unseen in the North in nearly a decade. His death raised the specter of more terror to come and tightened the tension between those implacable opponents, the I.R.A. and the British government.
The news of Sands' death was announced in the British Parliament, as it had to be, since the I.R.A. rebel became a member in a stunning by-election victory on April 9. But Speaker of the House George Thomas omitted the usual expressions of bereavement and extended no sympathy to the relatives. That break with tradition matched the tough mood of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who had refused to move an inch in the face of Sands' demands. Said Thatcher crisply: "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice his organization did not allow many of their victims."