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:
“He doesn’t want you for friends, that’s why he did it. You see, when guys have been in the line as long as we have, you find out it’s no good to make friends, ‘cause when a friend gets it—well, it’s rough on you. The buddies that come with you you’re stuck with, but you don’t make no new ones. It’s the dyin’ truth.”
—Gil Doud, U.S. screenwriter, and Jessie Hibbs. Johnson (Marshall Thompson)
“It’s no go the picture palace, it’s no go the stadium,
It’s no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums.
It’s no go the Government grants, it’s no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.”
—Louis MacNeice (1907–1963)