Bobby Sands Jokes

Bobby Sands has been portrayed in the films as a hunger strike hero.

Robert Gerard Sands was a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who died on hunger strike while imprisoned at HM Prison Maze in Northern Ireland. Sands helped to plan the 1976 bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry, which was followed by a gun battle with the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Bobby Sands Jokes, Bobby Sands was a member of the IRA who had been interned in Long Kesh, one of the notorious H-Block prisons set up by the British in their war against terror. He died in a prison hospital after a 65-day hunger strike.

Nine other IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) members who were involved in the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike died after Sands. On the day of Sands’ funeral, Unionist leader Ian Paisley held a memorial service outside Belfast City Hall to commemorate the victims of the IRA. In the Irish general election held the same year, two anti-H-block candidates won seats on an abstentionist basis.

The media coverage that surrounded the death of Sands resulted in a new surge of IRA activity and an immediate escalation in the troubles, with the group obtaining many more members and increasing its fund-raising capability. Both nationalists and unionists began to harden their attitudes and move towards political extremes. Sands’ Westminster seat was taken by his election agent, Owen Carron, standing as’ Anti H-Block Proxy Political Prisoner ‘with an increased majority.

The Grateful Dead played the Nassau Coliseum the following night after Sands died and guitarist Bob Weir dedicated the song “He’s Gone” to Sands. The concert was later released as Dick’s Picks Volume 13, part of the Grateful Dead’s program of live concert releases.

Songs written in response to the hunger strikes and Sands’s death include songs by Black 47, Nicky Wire, Meic Stevens, The Undertones, Eric Bogle, Soldat Louis, and Christy Moore. Moore’s song, “The People’s Own MP”, has been described as an example of a rebel song of the “hero-martyr” genre in which Sands’s “intellectual, artistic and moral qualities” are eulogized. The U.S. rock band Rage Against the Machine listed Sands as an inspiration in the sleeve notes of their self-titled debut album and as a “political hero” in media interviews.

Celtic F.C., a Scottish football club, received a € 50,000 fine from UEFA over banners depicting Sands with a political message, which were displayed during a game on 26 November 2013 by Green Brigade fans.

Bobby Sands has been portrayed in the following films:

Sands was played by John Lynch in the 1996 film Some Mother’s Son. It was directed by Terry George and written by George and Jim Sheridan.

Sands was played by Mark O’Halloran in the 2001 film H3.

Michael Fassbender played Sands in Hunger, a 2008 film by Steve McQueen about the last six weeks of Sands’s life in the context of the 1981 Irish hunger strike. It premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and won McQueen the prestigious Caméra d’Or award for first-time filmmakers. It was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK for the first time on December 15, 2009.

The 2016 documentary film, Bobby Sands: 66 Days