May 5, 1981: Bobby Sands, Member of Parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, dies at Her Majesty's Prison Maze in County Down, Northern Ireland, 66 days after starting a hunger strike there. He was 27 years old.
He was 15 when the Northern Irish civil war known as "The Troubles" began in 1969, and, as a Catholic, he discovered that Protestant kids who once considered him a friend would no longer even talk to him. He dropped out of school, and took a job building buses. Members of a Loyalist "Tartan gang" found him on the job, held him at gunpoint, and told him never to come back if he valued his life.
In 1971, he joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He served 3 years in prison on a gun charge. He and a colleague planned the bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry in 1976. A gun battle ensued, and Sands was among those arrested trying to escape. He and 3 other men were sentenced to 14 years in prison -- not for the bombing, but for possession of the gun used in the ensuing shootout. It was as if they were giving him the bombing's punishment for the much smaller charge.
Conditions at Maze were brutal. Guards frequently took prisoners, including Sands, and stripped them naked and beat them. This was in response to the end of "Special Category Status," as they began to be treated like any other criminal, and not like a political prisoner, and thus forced to wear prison uniforms.
A committee of prisoners, led by Sands, presented a list of demands, including the right not to wear a prison uniform, and more blankets for the Winter months. These demands were flat-out refused. On March 1, 1981, Sands began his strike, saying he and the other prisoners would not eat until the demands were met.
Four days later, Frank Maguire, Member of Parliament for the district of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, died of a heart attack, forcing a by-election for his seat on April 9. In solidarity, some potential candidates withdrew, and threw their support to Sands, who was unable to campaign, and was in no position to even intend to. He won, 30,493 votes to 29,046 for a Loyalist candidate, a 1,447-vote margin of victory, 51.2 percent of the vote.
But he would never be able to take that seat. He remained in prison, and his strike went on and on. Because of the large Irish presence in America, the national news here covered this story day after day, counting up the days just as they did with the recently-ended Iran Hostage Crisis.
On Day 55 of the strike, ABC World News Tonight showed the photograph above, showing what Sands looked like before his conviction, and then, not having access to a current photograph, showed an artist's depiction of what he looked like at this point. I can't find that drawing on the Internet, but he looked like images I'd seen of newly-freed prisoners from the Nazi Holocaust. The only photograph I've seen shows him with a long beard that obscures how skinny he'd gotten, and it isn't clear how close to the end he was.
People from all over the world, including Pope John Paul II, head of the Roman Catholic Church, contacted British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, begging her to give in to the demands, rather than let a duly-elected Member of Parliament die. A Protestant and a hard-right-wing Conservative, she flat-out refused.
On Day 66, May 5, Sands died. Thatcher's official response, while addressing Parliament: "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organization did not allow to many of its victims."
Over 100,000 people lined the route of Sands' funeral, and he was buried not far from his parents' home, in Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast.
The 1981 British Home Championships were canceled, because the "national" soccer teams of England and Wales refused to play away to Northern Ireland, not because they opposed Sands (not officially, anyway), but because they were afraid they would be attacked by the home fans.
In New York, the International Longshoremen's Association announced a 24-hour boycott of providing service to British ships; and the Archbishop, Terence Cardinal Cooke, offered a Mass of Reconciliation. Perhaps the greatest tribute was an agreement of the City's Irish bars: For 2 hours, they closed.
In New Jersey, the General Assembly, the lower house of the State legislature, voted 34-29 for a resolution honoring Sands' "courage and commitment." Just 28 miles away, in East Brunswick -- and with towns named Milltown and Old Bridge, also the names of towns in Northern Ireland, on either side -- the 11-year-old version of me couldn't understand why Thatcher let it happen.
President Ronald Reagan, an American of Irish descent, but a Protestant one, survived an assassination attempt during the hunger strike (although that had nothing to do with it), and made no public statement about Sands' cause, and made no statement on the occasion of Sands' death.
Another 9 hunger strikers would die, before the remaining strikers gave up. What did they gain? Publicity and sympathy, but nothing else.
On July 2, Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act 1981, automatically disqualifying anyone from election if they were serving more than one full year in prison. On August 20, a by-election for Sands' seat was held, and Owen Carron, a Sands ally, won with 49.1 percent of the vote, but with a larger margin of victory than Sands. Although never officially connected with terrorism, he lost his bid for re-election in 1983.
On October 5, James Prior, newly installed as the British government's Northern Ireland Secretary, agreed to Sands' original demands for the remaining political prisoners.
Thatcher remained Prime Minister until 1990. The Good Friday Agreement, not even remotely possible as long as she remained in office, ended The Troubles in 1998. HM Prison Maze was closed in 2000, and demolition began in 2006. Had the British government shown some humanity, and accepted his reasonable demands, Bobby Sands would have been 52 years old.
In 2013, Thatcher died, and while half of Great Britain, including the Protestant sectors of Northern Ireland, went into deep mourning, the other half, including the Catholic sectors of Northern Ireland, cheered. There was no holding of tongues by her opponents, as happened in America in 2004 upon Reagan's death.
Also in 2013, the Maze site was redeveloped into Balmoral Park, a showgrounds. With some irony, the main tenant is the Balmoral Show, an agriculture exhibition.
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May 5, 1981 was a Tuesday. Actress Danielle Fishel was born. She played Topanga Lawrence on the sitcom Boy Meets World, and later, having married the earlier show's protagonist, Topanga Matthews on the sequel sitcom Girl Meets World.
These games were played in Major League Baseball:
* The New York Yankees lost to the California Angels, 6-2 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Barry Foote hit a home run, but Reggie Jackson went 0-for-4, and Tom Underwood was removed when he couldn't get an out in the 4th inning. Brian Downing later hit a home run for the Halos.
* The New York Mets lost to the San Francisco Giants, 9-7 at Shea Stadium.
* The Montreal Expos beat the San Diego Padres, 4-3 at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 8-7 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. Manny Trillo homered, and Mike Schmidt and Pete Rose each had a 2-RBI double.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Minnesota Twins, 3-2 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.
* The Houston Astros beat the Chicago Cubs, 4-3 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Atlanta Braves, 4-1 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis.
* The Kansas City Royals beat the Boston Red Sox, 2-1 at Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City. George Brett went 1-for-4 for the Royals, while Carl Yastrzemski did not play for the Red Sox.
* The Texas Rangers beat the Chicago White Sox, 6-1 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas.
* The Oakland Athletics beat the Detroit Tigers, 6-2 at the Oakland Coliseum.
* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Seattle Mariners, 4-1 at the Kingdome.
* The Cincinnati Reds and the Pittsburgh Pirates were supposed to play each other at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, but were rained out. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on May 7, and the Pirates won both games, 3-1 and 7-1.
* The Cleveland Indians and the Toronto Blue Jays were supposed to play each other at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. This game was never made up, due to the Strike of '81.
Football was out of season. The NBA Playoffs were in the Conference Finals. In the East, the Boston Celtics beat the Washington Bullets, 131-126 in double overtime at the Boston Garden, to move on to the Conference Finals. And the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 110-98 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. But, 2 nights later, the Sixers beat the Bucks to advance to face the Celtics.
In the West, the San Antonio Spurs eliminated the Seattle SuperSonics, 109-103 at the Kingdome in Seattle, setting them up to play the Los Angeles Lakers, who had already wrapped up their Conference Final berth. (Yes, the Kingdome hosted baseball and basketball on the same day.) In the NBA Finals, the Lakers beat the 76ers.
The Stanley Cup Playoffs were approaching their climax. The day before Sands' death, the New York Islanders had wrapped up their 3rd straight Finals bid, completing a 4-game sweep of the Quebec Nordiques. The day after his death, the Vancouver Canucks clinched their 1st Finals appearance, beating the Chicago Black Hawks in 5 games.
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