Long Kesh Years
In prison, Sands became a writer both of journalism and poetry—being published in the Irish republican newspaper An Phoblacht. In late 1980 Sands was chosen as Officer Commanding of the Provisional IRA prisoners in Long Kesh, succeeding Brendan Hughes who was participating in the first hunger strike.
Republican prisoners organised a series of protests seeking to regain their previous Special Category Status and not be subject to ordinary prison regulations. This began with the "blanket protest" in 1976, in which the prisoners refused to wear prison uniform and wore blankets instead. In 1978, after a number of attacks on prisoners leaving their cells to "slop out" (i.e., empty their chamber pots), this escalated into the "dirty protest", wherein prisoners refused to wash and smeared the walls of their cells with excrement.
Read more about this topic: Bobby Sands
Famous quotes containing the words long and/or years:
“An old French sentence says, “God works in moments,”M”En peu d’heure Dieu labeure.” We ask for long life, but ‘t is deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.”
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“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms, 90:10.
The Book of Common Prayer (1662)