To be fair, some sources say that Maggie was willing to make a deal but the top men at the RA were happy to let Sands and the others die. Who knows?
The "hunger strikers" were forced to continue with their "protest" ... as the IRA said if they didn't, their families would be murdered! They didnt do it through choice... That should get the paddies raging...
I've heard that too, in fact I was told that at the time, no way of knowing if it's true I suppose. This should fire them up too...
What's so heroic about him? He died in vain. Northern Ireland is still under British rule and looks like remaining that way for a long time.
I once read that the civil rights movement in America would have happened earlier if they had backed a young black girl who sat on the front of a bus six months before Rosa Parks did....but the young girl was unmarried and pregnant...
Well, it's debatable whether the Provisionals would currently be in government right now if it wasn't for the huge propaganda coup they got from the hunger strikes (they were electoral non-entities before 1981). They didn't achieve their outright goal of a united Ireland of course, but I don't think anyone got what they wanted from the conflict.
