As a child, Sands was fairly ordinary, with little to distinguish him from his mates. He did not stand out in school or show the leadership qualities which later became so priminent in him. His main delight was in sports of all kinds. While he didn't always have natural talent in the sport of the moment, he made up for it with enthusiasm and passion. In soccer, the team was composed of both Catholics and Protestants. The boys did not care overly much; in fact, they would while away the time singing each other's rebel songs.
At age sixteen, Sands went to work as an apprentice coach builder. Two years later, in 1968, he was intimidated out of his job. One morning, he went to work and found some men standing nearby cleaning guns. One of them threatened to use a gun on him if he did not leave. He also found a note in his lunchbox ordering him to leave.
At age eighteen, Sands joined the IRA. Some of his cousins had already been arrested, and he felt that it was time to get involved. He described this time in this way: "My life now centered around sleepless nights and stand-bys dodging the Brits and calming nerves to go out on operations. But the people stood by us. The people not only opened the doors of their homes to lend us a hand but they opened their hearts to us. I learned that without the people we could not survive and I knew that I owed them everything. "[Larkspirit]
Just four years later, in 1972, Sands's family was again forced to leave their home because of intimidation by their Protestant neighors, some of whom were erstwhile friends of Sands. The family moved from Rathcoole to the Twinbrook estate on the outskirts of West Belfast.
Later that year, Sands was arrested when four handguns were found in the house where he was staying at the time. He was charged with possession of weaponry and was sent to Long Kesh to spend three years in the cages as a political prisoner. It was during this first stay in jail that Sands learned Gaelic, which he later helped to teach to the other blanketmen in the H-Blocks.
Three years later, immediately upon his release, Sands returned to Twinbrook and again became active in the IRA, where he discovered that by this point the British government was attempting to criminalize the IRA. Sands also became a community activist, getting involved in his community and attempting to help with the social problems.
However, in six short months Sands was again under arrest. Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurray had been attacked by a bomb. The RUC found and arrested Sands and three other young men in a car near the site. After six days of interrogation at Castlereagh, where Bobby refused to surrender any information other than his name, age, and address, Sands was remanded for eleven months. At the trial in September 1977, Sands refused to recognize the court as legitimate, and the judge was unable to link him or the others to the bombing. Instead, he sentenced all four to fourteen years each for possession of the revolver found in the car; fifty-six years total for possession of one gun.
For the first twenty-two days of his fourteen years, Sands was in solitary confinement, naked for two-thirds of that time. As soon as the officials moved him to H-Blocks, he went 'on the blanket'. In February of 1979, he began to write for 'An Phobhacht/Republican News', using the pen name "Marcella", the name of his sister. He wrote his articles on small pieces of toilet paper in biro pen, and they were then smuggled out of the H-Blocks like all the other communications or "comms".
"Bobby became PRO for the blanket men and was in constant confrontation with the prison authorities which resulted in several spells of solitary confinement. In the H-Blocks, beatings, long periods in the punishment cells, starvation diets and torture were commonplace as the prison authorities, with the full knowledge and consent of the British administration, imposed a harsh and brutal regime on the prisoners in their attempts to break the prisoners' resistance to criminalisation." [Larkspirit]
With the H-Blocks a microcosm of the battle between British and Republicans, Sands joined in all the protests, blanket, no-wash, dirty...
In 1980, when talks broke down between Atkins and Cardinal O Fiaich, the Irish Catholic Primate, and the men of the H-Blocks signaled their intention to hunger strike, Sands volunteered to take part. However, he was refused. As the protege of Brendan Hughes, he became O/C in his place when Hughes joined the strike.
During the hunger strike, Sands served as liason between British prison authorities and the strikers themselves. The prison authorities gave him political recognition, and he was allowed to visit the strikers in the prison hospital, especially Hughes. Since the seven men alone decided to end the strike, he had no part in the decision. However, the officials allowed him to meet with them that same night, as well as meeting with the Ocs from Blocks 4, 5, and 6.
December 19th, 1980, Sands issued a statement declaring that the prisoners refused to wear prison-issue clothing or do penal labor. He then met with Stanley Hilditch, the prison governor, to try to negotiate a way of scaling back the protests gradually. However, these tentative efforts to show flexibility produced no results from the officials. The prisoners were still expected to conform, which would mean allowing themselves to have criminal status imposed on them. But the prisoners recognized that by accepting criminal status they would be providing a precedent for the British to criminalize Irish freedom fighters and thus the IRA itself, and they refused to yield.
Sands requested permission to lead a second hunger strike. Certain of his death, he insisted that he be allowed start two weeks before any other strikers - that way, perhaps his death could get the British to yield on the five demands and the others would survive. For the first seventeen days, Sands kept a secret diary in which he described not only the day-to-day results of the fast but also his views on the strike itself. He felt that the strike was for the sake of not only the five demands but also as a larger battle against British rule in Ireland. The diary was, like all other communication, written on tiny pieces of toilet paper in biro pen, and usually hidden inside Sands' body so that it would not be discovered during a search.
On Monday, March 23rd, Sands was sent to the prison hospital. One week later, he was nominated as a candicate for the Fermanagh/South Tyrone election to replace the parliament seat that was emptied by the sudden death of Frank Maguire, who had supported the prisoners in their struggle. Although he had no intention to save his own life by being elected, Sands still campaigned through Owen and was successfully elected MP (Member of Parliament) For Fermanagh and South Tyrone.
Why would a republican prisoner seek a seat as a governmental official? What good would it do? How could such a man effectively fulfill his duties when he was trapped in a concrete box and all his statements had to be smuggled out on toilet paper comms? The answer is this - legitimacy and public support. By being elected to Parliament, Sands showed that the IRA and the prisoners were not merely a handful of violent thugs but were instead warriors supported by their own people.
Tuesday, May 5th, the 66th day of his strike, Bobby Sands died in the prison hospital of the H-Blocks of Long Kesh prison, having sacrificed his life to a cause in which he believed wholeheartedly, for the sake of which he was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.
"Bobby was a truly unique person whose loss is great and immeasurable. He never gave himself a moment to spare. He lived his life energetically, dedicated to his people and to the republican cause, eventually offering up his life in a conscious effort to further that cause and the cause of those with whom he had shared almost eight years of his adult life. In his own words: "of course can be murdered but I remain what I am, a political POW and no-one, not even the British, can change that."" [Larkspirit]
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