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Famous By-Elections: Bobby Sands and Fermanagh & South Tyrone 1981
38 Plays18 days ago
Possibly one of the most controversial by-elections in British political history occurred in 1981 when Bobby Sands, an imprisoned IRA terrorist, was elected to the Westminster Parliament despite being imprisoned at the time.
This interview with Dr. Peter McLoughlin of Queen’s University Belfast, reader at “The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice”, tells the podcast all about the context in which the by-election takes place, how the election worked, as Sands was in prison at the time, and how his election was received within the UK and around the world.
Sands’ election and term as an MP was short-lived. His death, whilst on hunger strike in the H-Block Maze Prison (Long Kesh Detention Centre), happened on May 5th 1981, meaning his term as MP was only 26 days.
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Transcript
Bobby Sands' Election: A Controversial Moment in British Politics
00:00:08
Speaker
What happens when a prisoner is elected to Parliament. Well, this is one of the most unique stories and one of the most controversial moments in electoral history in Britain.
00:00:19
Speaker
Welcome to the Observations podcast. I'm Jason McKenna and today I'm joined by Dr Peter McLaughlin, a leading expert in Irish politics.
Who Was Bobby Sands?
00:00:28
Speaker
We're going to be discussing the election of Bobby Sands as member for Parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in 1981. But before we get into that, how you doing today, Peter?
00:00:39
Speaker
I'm very good, Jason. It's good to speak to you. So, Peter, could you please explain who Bobby Sands was? Why was he in prison?
00:00:49
Speaker
Well, from the outset, that's actually quite a controversial question because there'd be very different views are here in Northern Ireland, still a very divided society as as to why Bobby Sands was in prison.
Understanding Northern Ireland's Troubled History
00:00:58
Speaker
I suppose the obvious straightforward explanation would be to say that he was a member of the IRA, indeed ah a very important member of the IRA, and that he was imprisoned because of his membership of the IRA and being found in possession of of weapons and charged of IRA membership. And so therefore, he was a terrorist. And that's why he was in prison.
00:01:17
Speaker
But obviously, Northern Ireland is a very complex situation where we need to understand what are the reasons that so many young men, and not just young men, but overwhelmingly young men, were joining the IRA.
00:01:28
Speaker
So it's a very complex history of of Northern Ireland being um set up as as really as a state ah for for the Protestant community in Northern Ireland that was dominated by Protestant community that was only had a unionist government for 50 years that discriminated against Catholics,
00:01:45
Speaker
um that Catholics would deny jobs and housing and and even voting rights.
Why Did IRA Members Demand Political Prisoner Status?
00:01:50
Speaker
And then when they they the trouble started, when there was a civil rights movement trying to address that issue of discrimination, that that that led to violence and civil rights protesters being attacked, even shot by the British Army, famously on Bloody Sunday. So all of these things have happened before Bobby Sands, as a young man, would have seen growing up and that that that causes him to join the IRA. So he would he and and those like him would have a very different perspective and feel that they were not terrorists. Indeed, this is why there was a protest going in the prisons at that time, is that they were insisting that they were political prisoners.
00:02:23
Speaker
They were, in fact, soldiers. They weren't terrorists, that they were representatives of the the Irish Republican Army. They felt that they were genuinely the legitimate representatives of of the Irish people in fighting for freedom and justice and a united Ireland.
00:02:37
Speaker
So it's not a straightforward answer there, but it hopefully gives you a sense of how ah complex this is. On one side, Bobby Sands is seen as as a criminal and as a terrorist. On the other, by Republican supporters, he would be seen as a freedom fighter and a soldier.
What Were the Goals and Demands of the Hunger Strikes?
00:02:52
Speaker
Could you actually elaborate a little bit more on the reasons for the hunger strike? You said there that they wanted reclassification as political prisoners, but was it more than just that?
00:03:03
Speaker
That was the main aim. that was the over that was That was the key focus is to be to recognition as political prisoners. Now, there was a whole series of of kind of sub demand, you might say, that were related to that that, that they should have the right to wear, that but relate to that principle. That was the key key principle that was being fought over. But that ah the prisoners, the Republican prisoners were demanding the right to wear their own uniform, sorry, to not wear uniforms, to wear their own clothes, to have to be able to organise themselves and have their own free time and know to be able to not be treated as an ordinary criminal. So it all relates back to this point that the British government had changed the law in the mid 70s. And I can come back and explain that point to now classify these these prisoners as saying that they were in fact just criminals, that they weren't political prisoners, they shouldn't be given any special recognition.
00:03:51
Speaker
um so It comes down to that core issue of Republicans refusing to be classified and as criminals, to say that they were not criminals, that they were freedom fighters, soldiers, and therefore when they were captured by state forces, that they were political prisoners.
Impact of IRA Protests and International Attention
00:04:06
Speaker
So that that was the key ideological debate that was at stake here, is that Republicans were refusing to to wear the uniforms. That was a very famous part of their protest is that they refused to wear the uniforms that they were being given to wear in prison to say that we are not criminals, that we are in fact soldiers and and prisoners of war. So it's that it comes back to that key issue of saying we refuse to be categorized as as terrorists, as criminals, we're political, we're soldiers.
00:04:34
Speaker
Okay. And you know could you explain the significance of this at the time? you know what Was there given a lot of public support and media coverage ah before even this Bobby Sands canda' ah candidacy was even announced?
British Government's Strategies Against IRA Prisoners
00:04:51
Speaker
There had been protests going on in in in the prisons in in Northern Ireland for some time, yes, particularly in the late 70s. And really, again, you have to go back to the start of the troubles in the late 1960s, then the emergence of the IRA as a serious paramilitary campaign or terrorists as as the unionists in the British state would have it.
00:05:09
Speaker
um You then had internment without trial, that lots of people suspected Republicans were being put into prison without due process, and that is without a a trial, um which was seen to be even by British standards of that that was wholly illegitimate, that this couldn't work and that lots of innocent Catholics were being arrested because there wasn't a proper trial process.
00:05:30
Speaker
So by the mid 70s, the British government had moved away from this position of interning people and trying to use, trying, because it didn't use The problem was quite often that trying to convict IRA members is that is they they they couldn't get people to stand up in court and say that these were IRA men or to to to say what they'd seen and and in a court or such like for fear of intimidation.
00:05:54
Speaker
It was very hard for the British government from their point of view to get convictions against IRA members. um But they tried to normalize the the the judicial system, but also to say, we're not going to very early on when they had interned Republicans, they had recognized that this was a political act. This was not this was a deviation from normal legal standards. And therefore, this was a political problem and that the prisoners were originally given recognition effectively as political prisoners. They were able to to all those things I've said before to to not wear.
00:06:26
Speaker
uniforms to be able to organize in their own and have their own free time and and not to be forced to perform a certain work duties in prison and so on. So all of this existed in the early 70s.
00:06:38
Speaker
But the British government tried to move away from that. And you can see why it wanted to do that. It wanted to delegitimize the IRA. It realized that by by allowing them recognition as in it being in any way political, that gave them support, um even in Irish America, for example, where a lot of the funding for the IRA in the early 70s was coming.
00:06:56
Speaker
So they wanted to try and undermine this claim by Republicans that they were political prisoners.
How Did Republican Protests Evolve Inside Prisons?
00:07:01
Speaker
And so from the mid 70s onwards, got rid of internment, changed the legal system, and now insisted that Republicans were in fact, just to be treated the same as any other criminals as as the British government would have it.
00:07:13
Speaker
So got rid of the political status. As a result of this, straight away from very early on, Republicans refused to accept this, refused, as I mentioned before, to wear the uniforms.
00:07:23
Speaker
And there was a whole protest in that for a long time of simply what was called a blanket protest. They would, because they would refuse to wear the uniforms and didn't have their own clothes. They would just put the blanket they were left ah that was left on their bed around their shoulders and otherwise be naked.
00:07:39
Speaker
So, you know, there was a serious political protest going on from from the late 70s that escalated then into what was called the dirty protest, where you had, was controversy about the way that the prisoners were, got there the prison wardens were were claimed, there's counterclaims about this, about exactly what happened, about whether excrement was being thrown at the prisoners or that the prisoners were was were at throwing at the the the the prison wardens. But it it ended up with the protest being, um which you can imagine, huge headlines of of smearing excrement on the walls of the prison. So you had this escalation from,
00:08:14
Speaker
the blanket protest to the dirty protest. And then finally, into the early 80s, you had the hunger strikes, you know, then then then it's continuing to escalate this campaign against the British government. So, yes, there was very serious prison protest going on from the from the later 70s into the early 80s. But it really reached its climax then when when you had the hunger strikes from the early nineteen eighty s And I'd like to explore a little bit more, maybe the tones of messaging, you know, was it different reporting that was done in Northern
Global Perspectives on the IRA and Northern Ireland
00:08:45
Speaker
Ireland elsewhere? you you mentioned that the issue, I guess, was global because it reached, as you said, ah the Irish community in America as well.
00:08:54
Speaker
ah What was that kind of different messaging from all the places that this this resonated? Yes, this is a very important point. The Northern Ireland was seen differently by different audiences and and and particularly in Irish America, particularly even in the Republic of Ireland, is that, again, you have to relate it to the complex history of Ireland, is that ah these this this group, the IRA, would claim lineage to the original IRA, which was, of course, the group which fought for Irish freedom, that secured Irish freedom for for the Republic of Ireland, what becomes the Republic of Ireland.
00:09:26
Speaker
the nineteen twenty s so again they'd be seen as this history of that's that's how irish freedom was gained and so lots of people in in the republic of ireland and indeed in irish america saw the more modern post 1969 northern ireland troubles ira as being the same that they were freedom fighters and therefore didn't believe the the british ah dominated media because britain obviously controlled the media and what was said in northern ireland but overwhelmingly So a lot of the British media reporting on Northern Ireland, what was reported in Britain, would would be very reported quite differently in the Republic of Ireland, in the United States, and in other parts of the Irish diaspora, but but very important and crucial in Irish America, because yes, there was a lot of support. um i mean, even people from Irish America who traced their their their ancestors back to the famine, again, a very controversial part of Irish history, but even the Kennedy family, for example, their their ancestors left Ireland during the famine. So all of these It's very, very complex history, which is less well known by the British people. Obviously, this this led to very different opinions of what was going on in Northern Ireland, not to say every Irish person or every Irish American supported the IRA by any stretch, but to say that they they certainly wouldn't be so believing of the British perspective. that And yes, some did.
00:10:42
Speaker
Some did sympathise with it or support the IRA. And there was important funding coming from Irish America to the IRA. So all of this creates this very complex problem where there's very different views about what was going on. That that comes back to this key point of Republicans and seeing themselves as freedom fighters, ah the British government and Unionists seeing them as as terrorists, and people having very different views on that on either side, not just in Northern Ireland, but in the Republic of Ireland, in Irish America and elsewhere.
00:11:10
Speaker
And just before we get on to the ins and outs of the the actual kind of election itself, you mentioned a rule change. So what was the treatment like before that? And was this rule change, um you know, challenged at all legally?
00:11:28
Speaker
Well, yeah, so to go back to... what what What the conditions are like originally, you have to remember that actually Northern had a very small prison population when the trouble started in the late 60s. So there's this huge influx of prisoners. They but had to build what, from a Republican point of view and from their propaganda, they could sell almost as being, they would present them as being concentration camps, these camps that were set up in which they had a lot of freedom because they weren't orthodox prisons.
00:11:54
Speaker
So you have this radical change by the mid 70s then of prisons being created and the famous H blocks that we're going to talk about a lot more than these very high secure prisons that were created um that that that allowed then the British government to change strategy to now not allow kind of freedom that the republican prisoners and indeed loyalist prisoners we we should know that as well enjoyed in the kind of camps the the long cash and so on and the gilligan camps up until mid-70s so you had a whole different system from the mid-70s not it's not just the rule change but now to have ah hugely increased prison capacity and much more secure prisons um and therefore
00:12:34
Speaker
it became ah a lot more from a Republican point of view, a lot more controlling, a a lot more hard line. And don't forget, these prisons would have been run overwhelmingly by by unionists, by the Protestant population, as indeed the police was. Again, it explains part of this problem that, you know, you had one community really running Northern Ireland, the unionist Protestant community, including the government up until 1972. But even after that, when the British government takes over, still running the police overwhelmingly and the prison service And so certainly there were instances of prisoners being mistreated by, by prison wardens and so on, and human rights abuses going on in prisons by the police and so on.
00:13:14
Speaker
So again, this, this would feed into Republican propaganda, but, but, but some of these human rights abuses that, that you know, these were proven by Amnesty International and the Bennett report by the British government also acknowledged that some of these abuses were going on.
00:13:28
Speaker
So it's, it's not a straightforward thing where one side was completely in the right here. And Republicans would argue that they were being abused and mistreated in the prisons. But it still goes back to this core ideological point of saying, even if they were being treated fairly, they weren't being treated. They weren't being treated as normal criminals. In fact, there are instances of Republicans being beaten and so on in prison. So they weren't being treated completely normally.
00:13:52
Speaker
But even if they were being treated without those human rights abuses going on, they would still argue, I would i would believe that they wouldn't accept to be classified as criminal. So it still comes back to this core ideological dispute of Republicans claiming legitimacy to say that they are a political mandate, they are mandated by the Irish people to to fight for Irish freedom of their soldiers versus the British government and unionist community saying, these are just terrorists, these are criminals.
00:14:20
Speaker
So let's focus our attention on the seat itself. Before 1981, this seat in Northern Ireland had already heated history behind it, being po passed between unionists and nationalists, but also infighting as well.
00:14:35
Speaker
So could you give a short history of the Fermanagh and South Tyrone seat? Yes, well, as you say, today today evening, is still it is still a constituency.
00:14:46
Speaker
It's got a very controversial history, as you know, but it's still a constituency that's relatively evenly balanced. There's a slight, it's held still now, well, it's held now by Sinn Féin. um There's probably a slight majority nationalists, but of course, that also reflects the fact that the population has changed and in the in the years since the hunger strikes and over all that period.
00:15:05
Speaker
But it's been fairly evenly balanced for most of its history. And this is important because it means that if there is just one candidate on either side, then the majority community, currently Catholics, will win it.
00:15:18
Speaker
But as you said, there was infighting on both sides, and this is a common thing in Northern Ireland is that it's the idea of splitting the vote, which we we use that term in other politics as well, is that if you have two similar candidates, maybe if you have a left wing candidate and a Labour candidate, that's going to split the vote between but on on the on the political left and the right will win. But you had a similar thing in Northern Ireland whereby If you have two candidates from, say, the nationalist community and one from the unionist community, the unionist is going to win because the nationalist vote will be split.
00:15:48
Speaker
and So it's that closely fought that if you if you have more than one candidate fighting on either side, that's going to really affect the outcome. And what was, I suppose, controversial about Fermanagh and Sardin-Tamon is because of that, because it was so closely fought, is quite often there was an agreement on both sides to just fill one candidate.
00:16:08
Speaker
And up until that point, there had been an agreed candidate on either side and it had passed from one to the other, unionist to nationalist. At the time of the hunger strikes, it was being held by a yeah by a candidate from the nationalist community.
00:16:22
Speaker
who had a Republican background, but had since moved, you know, disavowed violence and was was was not ah representing Sinn Féin or the IRA, but would would have arguably have kept that seat um if if facing a unionist candidate. and and and They, by pure circumstance, this is what arguably created this this famous historic moment, passed away at that time. um So you had now a situation where there was a possibility of an election again, which gave Republicans having their prison protests, saw this as an opportunity now to stand their candidates.
00:16:57
Speaker
The question would be, which we might get on to, is whether the SDLP, the normal moderate nationalist party, would normally contest that seat as well against Republicans and say, not believing in violence and saying that they would stand against a Republican candidate, whether they were going to do likewise, because if that happened, it would pass to the unionists. So again, it's it's quite complex what I'm explaining there, but hopefully it's made sense is that depending on the number of people who stood in the constituency,
00:17:26
Speaker
um it could go either way but if you had a straight fight as turned out to be the case with Bobby Sands election it was more likely that the nationalist or republican candidate would win. Let's get on to the ins out of the election because as you said there it was brought about by the sudden death of the previous MP but How quickly were the cogs you know starting? How quickly were was there an awareness that prisoners or Sinn Féin, that this could actually evolve into a political opportunity?
00:17:59
Speaker
I think there would have been people very early on in the Republican movement who would have saw this as a huge opportunity. um Because again, you've got to relate it to Irish history. This had been done before, that in the 1920s throughout Ireland, before there's a Northern Ireland,
00:18:13
Speaker
You had a similar thing where you had an IRA campaign and you also had the original Sinn Féin party. Again, this is such a complex history that there was a party in the 1920s Sinn Féin that the modern Sinn Féin claims heritage from and that had used similar tactics that had fought an armed struggle against British forces in Ireland, but also had elected its Sinn Féin candidates. So tried to do the same thing of having a military campaign and a political campaign to say,
00:18:42
Speaker
British rule is unacceptable in Ireland. So this is part of the Republican tradition is to say that we're going to fight on two fronts, that but there's going to be a military and a political struggle. So I think there would have been very early on Republicans who would have saw this as an opportunity.
00:18:57
Speaker
Where I think there would have been debate is in Northern Ireland that time, probably very few Republicans. There was certainly debate amongst the Republican leadership felt that they could actually win that seat.
00:19:08
Speaker
Because of what had been going on for so long, for over 10 years, then of of an IRA campaign that had involved terrible atrocities. um bloody I've mentioned Bloody Sunday before, but again, similar things on the other side of the the bombing campaign of the IRA and Bloody Friday and lots of innocent civilians being killed in Northern Ireland and indeed in Great Britain, the Birmingham bombings, Guildford, etc.,
00:19:30
Speaker
So for all of these reasons, Republicans probably doubted that they could win a significant number of Catholic votes in Northern Ireland. So I think there would have been some Republicans. Apparently, there was a significant debate about those who felt that it could be a ah disaster if they stood and lost, because, again, you have to put it in the context where.
00:19:50
Speaker
The British government and Margaret Thatcher, who was leading the government that time was very clear on this, is that these are criminals. they are They are not political. They have no political support.
00:20:00
Speaker
So there was a risk for Republicans to stand with a huge prize from their point of view, if they could contradict Margaret Thatcher and say, well, actually, we do have political support. But there was a risk involved. If they lost the election, then equally the British government could have used that to say and in Irish America and elsewhere, these are criminals, they have no political support and Irish Americans shouldn't be supporting them therefore because the Catholic people of Ireland, of of of Northern Ireland have voted against them as well.
00:20:27
Speaker
So you can see there was a lot at stake. There was a huge prize in terms of propaganda and PR and the propaganda struggle between the Republican movement and the British state. and But I think Republicans would have saw very early on that this was This was something that worth trying. and And as it turned out, though they they were successful in this and in this instance and and very importantly because it changes the direction of the conflict there afterwards.
00:20:50
Speaker
Let's explore as well that there wasn't just the complications, as you said, there of parties who would be standing and also the considerations of the propaganda, the repercussions for long-termism, but even Bobby Sands' candidacy itself,
00:21:07
Speaker
depended on Noel Maguire, the brother of the previous MP, and whether he was going to stand or not. Could you explain the the story behind that? um ah Again, there's lots of testimony, there's stories about, ah you know, the the late papers being handed in. But was there direct discussions between the parties on this issue? i mean, who was involved with ah deciding on the candidacy of Bobby Sands or Noel Maguire?
00:21:32
Speaker
I think it's it's a it's hit's ah an episode that's impossible to give a wholly accurate account of because there are competing versions of what aren't went on there. It's obviously quite controversial what happened. It comes back to this point about the norm would be is that the SDLPs, the SDLP a reminder were the the moderate nationalist party. So um the the party that were were led by John Hume, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize for the Good Friday Agreement. and So it gives you a sense of this was the party that was represented the Catholic people, but was totally committed to peaceful means and to nonviolent means and therefore opposed the IRA and opposed what they were doing.
00:22:07
Speaker
So the norm would have been that the SDLP would challenge Sinn Féin, as they do today, or challenge any Republican candidate like Bobby Sands. um So the onus would have been on the SDLP to do that. Now, allegedly, it's suggested, so it's impossible to know the ins and outs of this, that I mentioned before that there was a common practice of getting a unity candidate and it was suggested that, that ah yes, that the deceased's brother would stand in now as a unity candidate so that it wouldn't be ah an IRA representative taking the seat.
00:22:39
Speaker
And that would allow the SDLP to stand back and allow the seat to still be held by a nationalist representative. It's probably the case that some way the SDLP were misled in what was going on there, that this was purposely done, that it was suggested.
00:22:52
Speaker
that um there was going to be a non-IRA candidate standing at the last minute, the papers were withdrawn. we probably can't know the truth of it, but that would seem a reasonable interpretation is there was a bit of gamesmanship going on there because the real competition was between, I suppose, until the election itself is is between the Republican movement and the SDLP, the moderate nationalist party. So whatever it was that somehow the the SDLP were were encouraged to not stand,
00:23:18
Speaker
creating a situation whereby then only Bobby Sands' name was put forward and he was the sole nationalist candidate, which, as I've said, that creates that situation now where you have a real potential now for Bobby Sands to win if there's only one unionist candidate. um So I don't think we can know the absolute truth of this because there's lots of different accounts of what went on. But that seems a reasonable kind of idea is is that.
00:23:40
Speaker
the STLP were kind of, there was gamesmanship going on there to try and avoid the STLP standing against yeah Bobby Sands and splitting the nationalist vote to allow Bobby Sands a free run and to simplify the election for for nationalist voters.
00:23:54
Speaker
And I'll get onto maybe what but that that choice, because that was still a very important choice for people, whether they were going to support Bobby Sands or not, STLP voters particularly. And that's arguably what was decided when it came to the actual electoral contest. But hopefully that explains what what went on before in terms of the candidates being stood for the for the election on the nationalist side.
00:24:14
Speaker
I'd just like to open out a little bit more about um what you're explaining there, maybe the game and gamesmanship with the SDLP. So was there direct discussions with Sinn Féin and them about you know agreeing on candidates? ah I mean, ah where could that opportunity be taken from you know the parties involved? Because obviously...
00:24:35
Speaker
it's It's a very complicated matter, but there there are papers handing in and certain dates and certain procedures that have to be met. So um I'm just interested when that opportunity could have occurred during those discussions.
00:24:50
Speaker
I think probably the confusion comes about because this would have been done through intermediaries, because, of course, it was very... It was difficult, again, because of the STLP's stance on this, they they were seen as as a non-violent party, that it couldn't be seen to negotiate with with the IRA, with the Republicans, and it couldn't be seen to be conniving in what they were doing. So ah imagine that's what allowed for this to go on, is that there wouldn't have been at that point, um later on when we get into the peace process, it becomes more complex, where the STLP do decide that they've got to engage with Sinn Féin. But at that point, ah the STLP would have been in the position that it it didn't engage directly
00:25:23
Speaker
And it didn't want to be seen. Of course, the the thing about the SDLP is, in principle, it wanted to win even Protestant votes. The SDLP was was founded by mainly by Catholics, but also by important Protestant civil rights leaders and wanted to present itself as being a non-sectarian party that would even win Protestant support for a united Ireland. So the SDLP, again, I stress, stood for the same ideal as the Republican movement. It wanted a united Ireland.
00:25:47
Speaker
but it wanted to achieve that by peaceful means. And it felt the only way to do that was to win Protestant support. And you couldn't do that through violence that you had to convince them. So the SLP had this moral dilemma whereby it was very reluctant to engage with Sinn Féin. And that allowed, I suppose, the situation during the H-Block crisis where there would have been informal i mean, it's still in the SDLP's interest to try and de-escalate the situation and try to continue to articulate it its peaceful message.
00:26:13
Speaker
So it still would have been an opponent of Sinn Féin. and And here's the other complexity. It comes from the same community. you know So there would have been people who, in in the same family, one might have been a Republican and one might have been an SDLP voter. So it shows there's a real dilemma there for the SDLP. And that's what what they what really happened there, is the SDLP was in an awkward situation, is it didn't want to be seen to be directly...
00:26:36
Speaker
ah be endangering Sands was on this by this time we haven't really gone on to this on hunger strike and the SLP did not want to be seen as siding with the British government in a situation that might cost Bobby Sands his life because that would also cost the STLP votes in the Catholic community i've said so again you've got this dilemma for the STLP it doesn't want to be seen as aligning with the Republicans or conniving in what they're doing because it wants to try and win Protestant support for a united Ireland um but equally it comes from the Catholic community and it cannot be seen to be in any way conniving with their the Thatcher government's hardline stance on the prison protests, because it will also lose votes from the Catholic community. So think that it tries to, hopefully, it's very, very complex, but explains there was a real dilemma there for the STLP that allowed itself maybe be to be led up the garden path a little bit in terms of saying, okay, well, there's going to be a unity candidate, neither Republicans nor the STLP would stand.
00:27:30
Speaker
And then at the last minute, clearly Republicans were, playing a bit of ah a fast one there and putting but putting Bobby Sands' papers in um alone and so that he was the sole candidate from the nationalist community.
00:27:41
Speaker
So in the end, as you've explained there, there was one national candidate, a nationalist candidate and one unionist candidate. Did that play into then the the campaign that was had on the ground? You know, what what kind of messaging did come from that in the end?
00:27:59
Speaker
That meant it was a much more straightforward in some sense, still highly, highly controversial, but a more straightforward struggle because, yes, you just have now two candidates. And really, on the unionist side, it's very simple.
00:28:11
Speaker
OK, so you have one unionist candidate, the the leader, in fact, Harry West of the Ulster Unionist Party at that time. So there's no real debate on the unionist side. They're going to vote for the unionist candidates. They're obviously even more going to make sure they come out and vote that day because they're not just standing against the STLP, they're standing against or or against a a unity nationalist candidate, they're standing against, from their point of view, an IRA terrorist.
00:28:35
Speaker
So the unionist vote, very, very straightforward. They're now all going to rally behind ah Harry West. But as I've said, it was quite a closely fought constituency, but probably even in the early 80s was a slight nationalist majority as it is today, even more so.
00:28:49
Speaker
The dilemma, therefore, was on the national side and echoes some more. I've already said about the STLP and really the STLP voters, because, again, we know how Republican minded voters, people who were supportive of the IRA were going to vote. They were going to vote for Bobby Sands.
00:29:04
Speaker
So the real dilemma and the real question, the real debate now was all about whether moderate STLP voters would also vote for Bobby Sands. If they didn't, then Harry West would obviously win.
00:29:16
Speaker
If they did, Bobby Sands could win the seat. And this is what would would create history and all the controversy that went with it. So there was a real dilemma there for the STLP, again, like there was in terms of whether it was going to stand a candidate. And again, you might think that it's a straightforward decision for STLP voters. Well, like they don't.
00:29:32
Speaker
believe in the IRA, they don't accept violence, so they can't vote for Bobby Sands. But again, we have to put this in a wider context of what was going on so that there's the the prison protests. Now there are, and I've said it escalated to the hunger strikes. And I think we really need stress how polarizing and how dramatic and how excruciating this this was. The idea of 10 Republican prisoners starving themselves to death slowly as a matter of political principles.
00:30:01
Speaker
principle So whatever people's opinions of these people, of of the things that they've done that end up them being in prison, and some of them had committed horrific acts, of course, as part of the IRA, they show that they were also prepared to and not just inflict suffering, as they had done as as IRA and members, but also endure suffering and to to die horribly and excruciatingly over a long period in order to prove a political point.
00:30:27
Speaker
I think that means, again, it'd be very hard for people who have very different positions on this. And most units would say they're still terrorists. They're still criminals. OK, but most people from the Catholic community would see this differently. Even moderates, even those who who abhorred violence would say.
00:30:43
Speaker
If Margaret Thatcher continues her stance of refusing any concession, because, again, it's complex. have to but take a slight detour here. The Irish government was also involved in this, trying to get.
00:30:55
Speaker
Thatcher to offer some compromise where there wouldn't be political recognition of the IRA, but there would be changes in the way that the prisons were organized, that, you know, there were a kind of a humanitarian solution, there would be better conditions in avoiding human rights abuses.
00:31:08
Speaker
And there was some kind of fudging of the issue there where prisoner that the IRA prisoners could be treated better, but not given political status. So Thatcher refused any concession while the hunger strikes were taking place. Now, those changes were made after the hunger strikes, but Thatcher probably true to her reputation, refused any compromise until the hunger strikes ended.
00:31:30
Speaker
So for moderate, non-violent STLP Catholic voters, they didn't, again, didn't want to be seen to be siding with Thatcher, who seemed quite prepared to let these these young men die. And again, whatever the reasons they were in prison, probably from a nationalist Catholic point of view, they would see some of these men as also being victims of the conflict, that they joined the IRA because they ah because of discrimination, because they had seen family members killed by the British Army or by loyalists because of oppression and discrimination.
00:31:59
Speaker
So they might not agree that they were freedom fighters, but they probably would agree that they were politically motivated, and particularly when they were prepared to die as a matter of principle. That was that would be the subtlete. It's quite hard if you if you don't accept this point of view to see that, is that SDLP voters would have a moral dilemma. They would say, we don't agree with the IRH.
00:32:19
Speaker
But we do agree there's a political problem, that these are politically motivated people. We're not going to agree with Thatcher in saying that these are criminals who, who if they if they're going to starve themselves to death, should be allowed to die.
00:32:31
Speaker
And like I think the key point I should be making here is saying that even probably quite conservative Catholics, um you know very anti-violence, would see see this as as trying to save Bobby Sands' life.
00:32:43
Speaker
They knew that if Bobby Sands died and the nine other prisoners died afterwards, This would just create more violence, more recruits for the IRA. That's exactly what happened because it's it's repeating Irish history. Again, we have to refer to Irish history.
00:32:57
Speaker
The same thing happened in 1916 when there was a rebellion in Ireland and the leaders were executed by the British government. It just meant more people joined the IRA. So it's a very different historical reading and and and um coming from a different tradition, the Catholic nationalist tradition. Even moderates didn't want to, didn didn't accept that Thatcher had the right approach.
00:33:18
Speaker
And a lot of them felt that they were voting for Bobby Sands to try and save his life, that if you voted for Bobby Sands, Thatcher would be forced to compromise and you would get a resolution without more lives being lost.
00:33:29
Speaker
So you can see how while it was a dilemma for a lot of STLP voters, a good number of them did ah eventually vote for Bobby Sands because they said, look, at the situation is not going to be resolved by these men dying.
00:33:41
Speaker
And indeed, Because even STLP voters by the early 80s, they'd been fighting for civil rights since the late 60s, and there hadn't been significant change. So there was, I suppose there was a real frustration within the nationalist community, even amongst moderates, who were prepared to, I guess, what what it was seen there as lend their vote to to the Republican movement to make a protest about this.
00:34:02
Speaker
So again, UNIS would not accept this. They would say this is a very different way that now even moderate STLP voters were voting for a terrorist. So again, you can see it's very polarizing on both sides and it's very complex to explain. I have to kind of go into a lot of detail there, but hopefully I explained that there was a real moral dilemma there.
00:34:20
Speaker
But it turned out that, yes, a lot of STLP voters were prepared to vote for Bobby Sands. A lot of them probably thinking that that would that would force Thatcher to compromise and to do to find some solution short of recognizing the IRA as being political, but to change the the prisons and bring about a more humanitarian system that would avoid they they de-escalate the situation that was going on in the prisons. But hopefully explaining a lot of different history historical angles on this, that that makes some sense to you.
00:34:49
Speaker
Yeah, and I want to focus a little bit as well now on the campaign itself. you know Because of this highly controversial situation, were there any moments where tensions rose? You've talked there extensively about violence conducted on both sides.
00:35:04
Speaker
Was that used as part of this election to to maybe intimidate and create certain results? There would have been violence throughout. i mean, this is a period where Northern Ireland was very, very severe violence from the nineteen late 1960s onwards.
00:35:19
Speaker
And the hunger strikes heightened that um because of what was at stake here. Yes. So so Republicans continued their campaign. Loyalists, we've not mentioned. And and we we shouldn't forget that there's loyalists there's violence coming from the loyalist community as well of loyalist paramilitaries, kind of a counterpart to the IRA, killing innocent Catholics.
00:35:36
Speaker
Something that was going on particularly by the IRA at that point was, um which relates specifically to the prison crisis, is a lot of prison warden, prison wardeners were being attacked and prison governors because they were being seen to be in charge of this regime that was, as I've said, there were instances of human rights abuses going on and and prisoners being beaten and so on.
00:35:58
Speaker
So the IRA had even, had always targeted the police and the army, but also was targeting a lot of ah prison wardens who who tended to be, as I've already noted, overwhelmingly Protestant. So again, Eunice wouldn't see this as being a part of a ah response to human rights abuses are going on in the prisons. And quite a lot of Eunice denied that and refused to accept that we're human rights abuses, or if there were, felt the IRA deserved to be have denied their human rights.
00:36:24
Speaker
So they saw this as as as simply as Protestants being killed, as Protestant police officers and Protestant prison wardeners. So the violence that was going on in this period was just fed into the the political polarisation what each side thinking they were right in their opinions of of the Protestant Unionist community feeling that the IRA were simply terrorists and that if the SDP even dared, SDP voters dared to think of voting for Bobby Sands that they were endorsing, killing of of of prison wardeners, of RUC officers and so on.
00:36:56
Speaker
So the violence was incredibly polarising equally on on the nationalist side. Republicans, um you know, continue to be killed and suppressed by the British Army and by the RUC and imprisoned and the human rights abuses I've talked about. So on both sides, the violence and and and and the human rights abuses going on just fed into this and was further polarising and led to it being a very highly, I mean, all elections in Northern Ireland in this period, all of them were highly contested and highly controversial because there was always violence going on.
00:37:28
Speaker
But it spiked during the hunger strikes because of what was going on, because of the huge tensions around it. because yeah prison wardeners and that and, you know, some of them killed in front of their family members and so on.
00:37:39
Speaker
So again, you know, one side, you see this is a horrific terrorist organization. On the other side, Republicans would say, we're we're killing those who are committing human rights abuses against our comrades, as they would see it. So it's a very, very polarizing period.
00:37:53
Speaker
The late nineteen the early 1980s was the most polarizing and period since the early 70s, when you had Bloody Sunday and the worst of the violence. So The violence really did pick up again in the early 80s, and it's very, very much reflecting what's going on in the prison protest.
00:38:10
Speaker
So we're going to take a short ad break now, but make sure to stay tuned because in the second half this podcast, there's still a lot to discuss with more of the campaign analysed and then the victory of Bobby Sands in that seat.
00:38:24
Speaker
And also, finally, the kind of long term implications as well. But we will see you a little bit.
00:38:32
Speaker
So Peter, um after that outbreak, I want to discuss now the kind of fascinating fact that, you Bobby Sands was in prison. He couldn't give speeches. He couldn't knock on doors. He couldn't partake in her and any traditional way in terms of how a normal election happens.
00:38:50
Speaker
How was this campaign managed? how How was the message spread in the local community?
00:38:57
Speaker
I suppose because of the reasons I've outlined of how polarised this and what was at stake, his life and and the others who were also on hunger strike at that time, there wasn't really need for conventional, what we would think of as the normal election canvassing. and And similarly on the unionist side, as I'd said, you know, Eunice felt, you know, outraged at the idea that there was simply a Republican candidate that the SDLP had not stood against them and, you know, they needed no motivation to out and vote as well. So what we might think of as is the kind of it's not, and it wasn't a normal political system. There was a very serious conflict going on. So even again, in most elections in Northern Ireland, there's, well, there is those conventional methods of knocking people knocking on doors. And there is now once we have a much more normal system and that period, actually these things were were not normal. I mean, you had instances of people, election canvases being shot and so on. So, you know, there was a really serious conflict going on here. So, so you, you know, the kind of conventional things we'd associate with this,
00:39:54
Speaker
and they just They don't work in the same way. ah But people didn't need motivation to vote, nonetheless, because of what the kind of things that were at stake here, the terrible things that were going on on either side of the conflict.
00:40:07
Speaker
And even more so, so but that's that's the case with any election in Northern Ireland during this period. But even more so during this, when so much was at stake, and you know, Bobby Sands didn't need to be outside knocking on doors. And of course, the Republican movement, and those supportive of, you know, the H-Block committee,
00:40:24
Speaker
would have been doing this. there would There would have been people obviously holding rallies and protests, but these would be more important than conventional knocking on doors. um And again, it's not like and normal election that you would have in Great Britain or in the Republic of Ireland or America or anywhere where, you know, people wouldn't be canvassing on all doors. You wouldn't go to certain areas because they'd be very Protestant or or vice versa, very Catholic, very Republican or very loyalist.
00:40:48
Speaker
So it's it's hard to explain how different Northern Ireland was. And therefore, how polarizing it was. And therefore, you don't need, in a way, those conventional methods that the politics was was on the news every night. and And a lot of it was the politics of atrocities, you know, the killing and the hardship and and everything else that was going on and the human rights abuses and everything that was going on meant that people didn't, that they knew you know, they they they knew who they supported or who they were going to vote for.
00:41:16
Speaker
The only thing that was slightly different this time is, is, as I say, it comes back to this dilemma of whether SDLP voters, because that's what That's what the question was during the campaign is, are SDLP voters prepared to put aside their pacifist principles and vote for Bobby Sands?
00:41:31
Speaker
They might argue with ah with the idea that they're going to stop, try and help stop the violence or stop the... um the the prisons protest by getting the British government and the and the and the system to to give a but a fairer system to the IRA, to Republican prisoners, because the STLP's position would be, this is feeding support for the IRA.
00:41:49
Speaker
Unless you change the prison system, unless you you you unless you stop human rights abuses, unless you give them some kind of special measures that allows them not to create propaganda out of this and to have the the blanket protest and the dirty protest and everything else that have happened you're you're just fueling support for the IRA. So the STLP would have seen a lot of voters, I guess.
00:42:11
Speaker
mean, I can't know what their their motivations were, but we we know a lot of them must have voted ultimately for Bobby Sands, despite the fact that they were committed to peaceful means. They must have felt that they were doing, this was the lesser of two evils.
00:42:21
Speaker
This was a way of de-escalating the crisis and of of saying to Margaret Thatcher, you must you must see that Northern is different, that whatever your views of these these prisoners Just calling them criminals is not helping. In fact, that's helping their their propaganda struggle. Because again, it was arguably a a um an own goal by the British government to to take away prisoner status, ah a political status, to create this struggle in the prisons. It created a whole ah forum for the for the Republican movement to now protest in Irish America, in the Republic of Ireland, elsewhere.
00:42:55
Speaker
And so the SELP would have had their own interest in trying to stop that. and trying to stop the situation, which is exactly what happened, it didn't work as they hoped, is that where Republicans realised they could now win political support.
00:43:08
Speaker
So, as I say, it was arguably a known goal by the British government in taking such a hard line stance in refusing any compromise over the prisons, while there were, you know, abuses going on and other things going on in the prisons that didn't try to bring about some humanitarian compromise on what was happening.
00:43:26
Speaker
So all of that fed into, again, a very, very polarizing situation. And and it's very hard for us to get our head rounds of it being in any in any way like a normal electoral contest. No contest in Orlando at that time was, but this one particularly wasn't.
00:43:41
Speaker
And just to explore those unconventional methods, as you described there a little bit more, um how were messages getting out from the prison? Were were there letters smuggled or or other ways to communicate messages from inside the H block to those outside?
00:43:59
Speaker
It was very difficult to do that because of the this was considered to be the most secure ah prison, one of the most secure in the world because of the type of prisoners that it was holding. Loyalists as well as Republicans. We were overwhelmingly talking about Republicans here, but very, very dangerous loyalists as well.
00:44:14
Speaker
ah Nonetheless, that was done but by by, again, quite highly unorthodox, astounding means, whatever your views on this, have you know, messages being being smuggled out by family meetings and and and messages would be exchanged orally but by ah my partners kissing or such like.
00:44:32
Speaker
and There was all sorts of ways in which very, very small messages were smuggled out on famously on cigarette papers. and so So incredibly, incredibly small messages written on cigarette papers because they're the kind of the only paper that Republicans were allowed in the prisons. um So incredibly small messages noted on this.
00:44:51
Speaker
This was a way for the the prisoners to communicate with the outside world. Now, that had gone on for a long time because this was about communicating with the the IRA leadership outside. So it wasn't so much about the kind of actual electoral manifestos or so on that were being smuggled out. Again, that would have been largely dealt with by the supporting H-block committee, that is, supporters of the of the the prisoners outside and families.
00:45:13
Speaker
Don't forget, there's families involved. We haven't really talked about them so much. So families who, who again, again might might not support what their sons were doing or their brothers were doing might be STLP voters. But their family members lives on the line. So again, that's another way of kind of giving you a sense of this is there probably were family members who who had whose sons had, in some cases, daughters, but in this instance, it's overwhelmingly it's a male prison who had joined the IRA who didn't agree with this, but felt that the only way to save Bobby Sands or Joe McDonald, the next hunger strikers life was to was to vote and says say to Margaret, look, they are politically motivated. We don't agree with their violence.
00:45:50
Speaker
So getting back to your key point about the the messages, that that there was a very elaborate system, but that was mainly more to do with the kind of, you know, what was that was communication between the prisoners and the IRA leadership.
00:46:03
Speaker
There was a whole support network with outside. the the prisoners, which included and was largely driven by the families, that would be a very important part of the campaign. The families would have been very prominent in this.
00:46:14
Speaker
They would have been saying, as I say, some of them themselves might have been STLP voters. They certainly would have been saying to STLP voters, please vote for Bobby Sands because it's the only way to save his life.
00:46:25
Speaker
So that would have been, again, it's it's so different to any regular British election or American election that at the forefront of this would not have been regular manifestos because there was no manifesto here. There was one key argument. was saying these are political prisoners.
00:46:40
Speaker
And the key the key argument was save Bobby Sands' life. On the unionist side, I think that the message would have been equally so similar, equally simplistic, ah but um totally totally opposed of saying this is a terrorist. And if he chooses to to commit suicide, that's how they would see it.
00:46:56
Speaker
Then so be it. We cannot compromise with these people. You cannot compromise with terrorism or evil. So again, very, very different perspectives on this, which are totally understandable. If you're a family member, you know, saying, please save my family member's life, or if you're a unionist victim of violence, who's lost a family member because of IRA violence to say, these are evil terrorists, you know. So again, it's it's very hard for us to try and contextualize in relation to a normal election.
00:47:23
Speaker
It's not so much about manifestos or elaborate platforms it's very very simple it's about bobby sands do you do you save his life or or do you do you allow him to die because he's a terrorist that's the the key message um so the there were ways in which there was communication from the prisoners the outside world but it was less the message was more simply constructed by the families and the support network outside or on the other side by youness saying these are terrorists let them die So kind of looking at it, you've got, you know, a block of voting or two blocks of voting that is not going to change.
00:47:58
Speaker
Whereas the SDLP, as as you've kind of described there, they're the swing votes. They're the ones that really count. So was there a focus? Was there kind of ah a canvassing campaign, but not in the formal way that, yeah you know, that we would expect maybe through community hubs, churches, things like that?
00:48:15
Speaker
Was that how this influential but simple message was brought about? And this message of, you know, save somebody's life or, as you said there, regard them as a terrorist. Was that how this was kind of discussed?
00:48:30
Speaker
Yes. And it's it's not to say that there wasn't some regular canvassing within the Catholic communities. where We're just focusing on that. Yeah, there would, of course, have been some canvassing. But a lot more of it is much more impassioned and public politics. A lot of it would have been rallies.
00:48:43
Speaker
A lot of it was i going back to the point I made about families that, you know, you even had instances of family members, you know, mothers would have been right at the forefront of this, as you can imagine, because um what a dilemma it was for them to be seen to be, you know, trying to save their son's life.
00:48:57
Speaker
ah you know, so they were put at the very front of this and going up on podiums and speaking. And that would have been more the kind of campaign that was going on. It was a very public and dramatic kind of politics that was going on to try and persuade the SLP voters to say, look, whatever you think about the IRA, whatever you think about Bobby Sands, you know, this is unjust what's going on in the prisons and you have to vote to save his life. So again, it's such a much more dramatic form of politics that's going on that involved a lot of again, which was common to Northern Ireland, a lot more public politics.
00:49:27
Speaker
Another thing that was done, um you know, don't forget that, again, you know, the media did not operate in the same way, that that that Republican candidates were not able to get there, to go on TV and so on in the same ways as easily.
00:49:42
Speaker
So a lot of it was done through community politics. A lot of it was done, it's still a tradition here in Northern Ireland today, to done on the walls of houses. You know, there's still this tradition in Northern Ireland of, of, ah ah ah of ah murals being painted on on Gable walls.
00:49:56
Speaker
And we still have today kind of some of the the the existing murals of, you know, celebrating. Bobby Sands' image is still on the headquarters of Sinn Féin's political offices in West Belva to this day. And those kind of messages were being put up on the walls. They were very famous um messaging put up of of counting the days that the hunger strikers had been on on on on protests, counting down the days in which they had not taken food.
00:50:21
Speaker
So there was a very, very public, dramatic kind of outworking of this and in the Catholic community and and a very whole different you know mirror image set of messaging going on in the unionist community. Similarly, a similar tradition of painting their messaging on the walls and so on.
00:50:35
Speaker
Again, it's it's such a different political context. ah So there was campaigning, but it's it's it's it's a campaign of a quasi civil war that was going on in Northern i at that time, because that's kind of what was happening.
00:50:51
Speaker
And so focusing on the legislative rules, because obviously, again, this is a situation almost unheard of, of somebody being elected whilst they're in prison.
00:51:01
Speaker
Was there no block to somebody being in prison being able to run or even become a member of parliament at that time? There wasn't, and I suppose it's quite surprising. So it was it was an error because obviously they changed the rules very, very quickly afterwards, as soon as Bobby Sands was elected.
00:51:18
Speaker
They rushed through legislation in Parliament to stop this ever happening again, because the likelihood was that he was going to die and and and another prisoner would have taken his place. So very quickly, they saw that that was a shortcoming in British government into and that this had been allowed to happen.
00:51:32
Speaker
And it is surprising as well, because, again, there is a history here of an event of an Irish politics going back is that lots of, you know, again, it goes back to the 1920s, the original Sinn Féin, the original IRA that you had.
00:51:43
Speaker
Famous you know political leaders of later of independent Ireland, like Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins, all of these, because they'd all been imprisoned at different times and had won elections as well. And so so there was there was a history there. So it is a little bit surprising that for whatever reason, that there was a loophole there that allowed this to happen. um I'm not sure if there was an instance of an actual someone in prison before in Irish history being voted, but there were certainly instances of people who were elected and then were put in prison.
00:52:11
Speaker
And indeed of hunger strikes when we get onto that again, there right there are historical precedent here that the very famously Terence McSweeney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, died on hunger strike in London and Brixton prison in the 1920s.
00:52:22
Speaker
So, again, all of these things that happened before, which, is again, would explain why people from the Catholic community, people in the nationalist tradition would have a different view on this and would see this as being, well, this has happened before and the British haven't learned and they haven't given us justice from their point of view.
00:52:37
Speaker
And it is going back to your question, that it is a little bit surprising that there wasn't any legislation there ah to try and avoid this. No one had thought in this modern era that that Republicans would put forward a candidate because up until the hunger strikes, even Republicans themselves had not considered that they would win a seat in this context. OK, so in the modern troubles, Sinn Féin had not stood for election or had not really decided they had maybe had stood for election, but not really had a chance of winning. It was only in the hunger strikes that you created this very polarizing, impassioned ah situation, a life or death struggle that allowed the possibility of of ah of Bobby Sands winning the election. And then, only then do you have Sinn Féin becoming a serious, starting to actually contest elections regularly.
00:53:23
Speaker
Up until this point, we've got to remember, there's no real Sinn Féin. It's really just the IRA. The Republican movement is just the IRA. And Sinn Féin is, as Gerry Adams famously described him, as being a very poor cousin of the IRA. And it gives that sense of the relationship is that it wasn't really an actor.
00:53:38
Speaker
It's through the hunger strikes. But now Sinn Féin becomes a kind of rises up to become like a co-equal with the IRA and later through the peace process overtakes and becomes the dominant force of the Republican movement. so that's why this election is so so transformative as it actually does lead the Republican movement towards a political strategy and eventually to the peace process, one might argue.
00:54:01
Speaker
And building upon that, you know, was there any attempts then once the candidacy was announced from authorities to actually oppose Bobby Sands from being elected? You know, we talked little bit earlier about rules being changed ah for the prisoners, but was there any discussion about rules being changed to stop him in that 1981 election?
00:54:23
Speaker
I guess there would have been. I'm sure there would have been efforts. I'm sure the British government would have seen what a disaster this was going to be, whatever the outcome. It was going to you know create a huge you know propaganda for for Republicans again in Irish America and elsewhere.
00:54:38
Speaker
um So I'm sure the efforts were made. But i guess it would have been seen that doing that so deliberately at the last minute to try and change the rules once Bobby Sands had stood for election. would be seen, it would again feed into the Republican campaign of saying, this is not a democratic state. If the if the if the the rules can be changed to stop someone from sta who's who was allowed to stand, to now suddenly change the rules, that would have just been used by the Republican movement so you know to fuel their argument, to say, this is not a democracy, that the rules are made up as you go along by the British government. so
00:55:09
Speaker
So by that stage, I guess, it was all it was was on the road to a hiding anyway, you know that they did change the rules afterwards. But I think probably there wasn't time to get the legislation through Parliament, I guess, the complex way in which Westminster works.
00:55:21
Speaker
It was rushed through afterwards very quickly. um But I don't think was simply there wasn't time. i mean, don't forget, you know, can the this was a by-election because somebody had died. So this was a very quick process. So I don't doubt that the British government would have considered and possibly tried to do that, whether it was an issue of simply legislative timing or the fact that it was considered that it would look terribly like you were thwarting democracy because,
00:55:46
Speaker
Republicans could then argue, well, know you know, you're afraid of an election. You've called us criminals and you're afraid to stand against us. So so they they would have made a propaganda victory out of that as well. So it was a really, the British state was in in in in ah in ah in a lose-lose situation at this point.
00:56:02
Speaker
You know, that that this this situation of Bobby Sands standing, the the the sheer coincidence of like ah of the David Sloan- Of a electoral representative dying and and therefore creating this space for him to to in northern Ireland to to contest the election.
00:56:18
Speaker
David Sloan- This was going to happen anyway, and all the British can do was try and minimize the damage, but I have no doubt that it would have tried everything it could. David Sloan- minimize the chance of of Bobby sounds winning in in any way, could it couldn't openly support Unionists but i'm sure that in any way that it could. David Sloan- Furtively through the media and so on, it would have been trying to deal legitimize.
00:56:40
Speaker
ah Bobby Sands and saying the same thing that Eunice Ware saying this is a terrorist. Any STLB voter who votes for this is supporting terrorism. So the British government and would have tried, would have very much wanted Bobby Sands to lose, but it probably was too late to to avoid the election taking place, I would imagine.
00:56:58
Speaker
And so on the day, on the ground itself, how was the election day managed because of all this media attention and, as we discussed, rising tensions as well? Was there a lot of security? Was there police involvement or more armed forces involvement?
00:57:13
Speaker
And were there protests or other issues that kind of prevented people from voting or or other issues at the ballot box? ah Very much so, all of the above. and And again, in a way that's very hard for us to comprehend. mean, it's only very recently in and in Great Britain that we've had the yeah the rules introduced where you have to have ID for elections.
00:57:33
Speaker
That existed going far, far back in Northern Ireland because there were all sorts of controversies went on in Northern Ireland and of of people voting more than once and people who maybe had passed away and their vote being used by a family member because of how contested, how you know you know, you know, from a from a nationalist point of view saying that the system was corrupt and not non-democratic and therefore Sinn Féin, particularly Republicans, did this exploited, you know, even like said, it was kind of almost a mythical thing about and people who recently passed away, their votes being used or people voting twice, coming in later into the poll booth with a different outfit on and all sorts of.
00:58:07
Speaker
So, you know, there were ID checks, things that have only recently been brought in in Great Britain, exist have long existed in Northern Ireland. a massive security presence, as you would say, yeah but you know, much more elaborate than anything you would see. But, you know, like you would see in a, again, a civil war situation, you know, because for a long time, Republicans had refused to take part in the electoral process and said that STLP were collaborators for like feeding into this idea that you could change the system democratically.
00:58:33
Speaker
So, you know, election canvases and so on attacked. And, you know, there were lots of, you know, it was, again, quite regular that there would be violence and security issues around elections in Northern Ireland that time.
00:58:45
Speaker
And this one, even more so. So i see a huge security presence, um you know, huge protests going on at this time. And the other thing we probably should mention is a massive media presence.
00:58:57
Speaker
Again, we have to go back to this, the sheer spectacle of what was going on, of 10 men slowly, in an excruciating manner, starving themselves to death and all of the kind of, you know, the drama, the sheer drama of this.
00:59:10
Speaker
had attracted not just the media from England and the Republic of Ireland. This was quite game changing as well, is that you had the international media was now in Northern Ireland. And this this was a massive thing.
00:59:20
Speaker
You know, all the big American networks, Australian, German, French, because this was ah this was such a contest. And, you know, these you know what was going on, a direct you know challenge to Margaret Thatcher, you know, the Northern Ireland had for a long time in.
00:59:34
Speaker
had made the headlines for violence and so on, but as the as the the kind of grim violence continued into the seventies interest we drew from it, but this was a new, more fantastical and dramatic kind of thing. You know, there was still violence involved, but the idea of these, these men who, who one side, the government was saying these were criminals and they were saying, no, we are, we are political prisoners and we're prepared to die for our principles.
00:59:57
Speaker
No. So again, even in whatever your views as a, as a, as a neutral journalist, you might think, well, this is fascinating, you know, to to try and communicate this to to people in Boston or Philadelphia or Sydney to say, you know, should we be looking again at someone like Bobby Sands and saying, is this guy actually not a criminal? And he is he politically motivated? So there was a massive media interest there, which again, did did do not suit the British government's aims because you now had American, French, Japanese journalists turning up and speaking to Republicans and Sinn Féin getting, and Republicans now getting, um,
01:00:32
Speaker
You know, airwaves in a way that they've never done before and the family members, again, all of these kind of things. So for the first time now, you had for a long time, the British government had tried to avoid this situation of of people from the Republican community, working class Catholics now who were getting their message across to world opinion.
01:00:48
Speaker
So, again, this had a massive effect in places like Philadelphia and Boston, where there were are a lot of Irish ah In places like London and Birmingham, where there are a lot of Irish, you know, that people were seeing and hearing what what working class Catholics were experiencing them. And even those who were not sympathetic to the IRA, you know, were showing the soldiers on their streets or occupying their schools and all sorts of, you know, the things that we cannot get our head around, you know, that we were not at all normal, that that were normal in Northern Ireland, that it would be quite normal for an army to install if they felt there was a security reason. and
01:01:21
Speaker
and a security installation in part of a primary school or such like. So all of these kind of things were now being broadcast to the international media and making people question what the British government was doing in Northern Ireland and showing that it wasn't a straightforward situation, that there were reasons why you had young people like Bobby Sands joining the IRA, whether you agreed with them or not.
01:01:40
Speaker
So again, It's so different in every way to a normal situation. There was always security. There was always special measures. But this election, more than any, there was the the biggest international media presence that had had ever been in Northern Ireland for this election. No two ways about it.
01:01:56
Speaker
So let's look at the actual victory itself and explore the impact as well. First of all, how was the vote split when all the counting was done? Was it a close election?
01:02:08
Speaker
It was relatively close, as is it still the case today and goes back to this point that it's it's a fairly evenly balanced constituency, a slight more Catholic majority. But that meant that, you know, um you know, if the SDP hadn't voted or SDP voters hadn't a voted for Bobby Sands, he would have lost.
01:02:26
Speaker
But it meant that there was a relatively narrow victory by, but I think, about a thousand and a half votes. OK, so I think it was something like twenty nine thousand to Harry West, the unionist candidate, that about thirty thousand and a half roughly votes for Bobby Sands. So relatively close i mean you and again make that point you know very clear that all the unionist voters had voted for the uvp's harry west and that ah the but vast majority of catholics had voted for bobby sands of the national space i'm sure there were those who still who couldn't have done that who felt that they couldn't vote for bobby sands um but it it seemed like very few people who who didn't uh abstain who didn't not use their vote so um yeah it was quite
01:03:04
Speaker
As is always the case, it's still the case today. It's quite ah closely fought. It's switched hands a lot of times, even since that 1981. But on this occasion, it was so polarising and so mobilising.
01:03:16
Speaker
You know, people on both sides come out in huge numbers. So it was quite closely fought. But the the key thing was, the game changing thing was that is's the Bobby Sands won.
01:03:26
Speaker
And therefore, this was an enormous ah propaganda victory for the Republican movement, because now you had for so long the British government saying, These are criminals. They're terrorists. They have no support. And, you know, famously, Margaret Thatcher, when when she was asked by a reporter saying, you know, are these not political. She's crime is crime is crime.
01:03:44
Speaker
There is no political crime. You know, she there's this famous phrase, you know, that she was unambiguous in her message of saying these are terrorists with no political support. Now, seemingly, Republicans could claim, well, we do have some political support. We are not just criminals, that there is a reason why nationalists and the Catholic community are so alienated.
01:04:04
Speaker
that they are prepared to give their vote, either to vote very very and much endorsed Bobby Sands or to acquiesce in this, to to kind of say, look, if I have to choose between Harry West and Margaret Thatcher and Bobby Sands and saving his life, then yes, I will vote for Bobby Sands.
01:04:20
Speaker
So that led to this ah relatively narrow, But in terms of political implications, enormous victory for the Republican movement, which, of course, as I've already kind of preempted and said this, this really then gives birth to Sinn Féin in the modern era.
01:04:34
Speaker
They now realize, because lots of IRA members doubted this, they didn't really, they didn't know if they could win support, if they could win over those SDLP voters and and worried that Bobby Sands would lose. And everything I've said would be the reverse.
01:04:47
Speaker
Margaret Thatcher could then claim, look, you don't have support. Democracy has prevailed. You're a terrorist, et cetera. So there was a risk involved, but therefore the rewards were huge for the Republican community. And they realized now we can actually have what what became known then as the The ballot box and armour-like strategies that you can have this dual strategy, which, as I said, was used in the 1920s in Ireland before, is that you can have both an armed campaign against British rule, the IRA, and a political struggle by Sinn Féin.
01:05:18
Speaker
And that's kind of what emerges in the aftermath of the hunger strikes and Bobby Sands victory, is that then Sinn Féin becomes a kind of a genuine political counterpart to the IRA as part of a dualist strategy.
01:05:31
Speaker
And so looking at the reaction then, ah was there a difference in how the result was perceived in Westminster compared to Belfast, Dublin, or even further afield? As you said, the eyes of the world was on this election.
01:05:44
Speaker
Absolutely. And and and yes, seen, yeah, very, very different. i mean, and you mentioned Westminster, I mean, that's that's the ultimate irony. Of course, Bobby Sands can't take his seat. I mean, Republicans wouldn't wouldn't have taken the seat. They're still Sinn Féin today abstaining from Westminster.
01:05:57
Speaker
But you now had... a prisoner, not just a prisoner, but a man who, you know, very shortly afterwards died of cuer his hunger strike, like who has been elected to to Westminster. So now as a member of the Queen's Parliament, you know, and all the other trappings that go with this, you know, so this, again, it's a huge propaganda, propaganda victory, you know, even in Republican areas now kind of mocking almost the British system, writing up the right honourable Bobby Sands, you know, kind of and So it's it's it's it is, again, a huge propaganda victory for Republicans to now claim that you are subverting and exposing British democracy for the sham that it is from a Republican point of view, is that you've now had a revolutionary, and an IRA hunger striker elected to your parliament.
01:06:42
Speaker
So you can imagine how this was seen at Westminster and how still the message would have pretty much the same, whatever the outcome, that you know he was still a terrorist and you know the terrible...
01:06:54
Speaker
acts that Republicans had committed that ended up there in prison, there would have been still that consistency of message because that's all, they i had to continue that position. That's all they could think to do. Whereas now Republicans could say, not just to its support base, but to people in the Republic of Ireland, in Irish America and so on, is to say, look, there is support here.
01:07:14
Speaker
And the media has come and shown that it is more complex, at least not not completely agreeing with Republicans and saying that they were had absolute legitimacy by any means. mean, any good journalist was going to say, you know, it's not like Republicans are right in this, but they're going to say, well, actually, there's more to this than what the British government and the British media have been saying. So that's why it's such a breakthrough. And that's why it was seen very differently. And and yes, you do see, even in, you know, the kind of mainstream and moderate, probably the Irish American press that is, you know, and those of the were from the Irish American community would have been much more sympathetic, but even in mainstream papers now, in America and Australia and France and Germany, people now questioning what the British government was doing in Northern Ireland and questioning
01:07:54
Speaker
situation whereby, yeah, even moderate nationalists now were seeming to vote for the IRA and what this meant. you know So it raised an awful lot of questions about what the British government was doing in Northern Ireland.
01:08:07
Speaker
So a huge propaganda victory and and changes the course of the conflict because now people are ah saying, you know asking a lot more questions of what they what the British government was doing and and then what the IRA were doing.
01:08:18
Speaker
um But it's creating a whole different way of seeing things. And a massive impact in the Republic of Ireland, I've mentioned it briefly, but we should know that two prisoners' candidates were also elected to the Irish Parliament ah during the hunger strike as well. It helped bring down a government in Dublin. In fact, it was more destabilising what happens in the Republic of Ireland. All of this has a radicalising effect on um on politics in the Republic of Ireland, which also forces the Irish government to start taking more interest and trying to get a solution in Northern Ireland. So it's not just the impact it has at Westminster, but also at Dublin.
01:08:52
Speaker
also in Washington and and throughout throughout the the rest of the European community and indeed the world. You know, there was um there are all all sorts of of of things happened as a result of this. i mean, and um I think it's in Iran, I believe that a street was named after Bobby Sands as a result of his death. So, you know, had huge international implications of what happened because other radical groups, leftist and, you know, anti-colonial liberationist struggles,
01:09:20
Speaker
saw Bobby Sands as kind of like a Che Guevara figure. yeah So he became a kind of a you know, even in radical Palestinian or Asian and African liberation movements, you know, took notice of what was going on. And again, for all of these reasons, was a huge propaganda victory for the Republican movement.
01:09:38
Speaker
And focusing on the the goals of the ah hunger strike itself, was Margaret fetcher ah Thatcher affected at all? Did it move her in terms of actually agreeing to some of these demands?
01:09:53
Speaker
Did it force her hand? No, in not in the first instance. It's a very good question because it's complex, like all the questions to answer this. So no, Margaret Thatcher, as she famously said, is the lady's not for turning. She did not give in and she she continued to refuse to compromise until a further nine prisoners died. And then eventually it was the the hunger strikers called off their strike.
01:10:17
Speaker
So in a very simple term, you could say that Margaret Thatcher won, right? Because she faces down the hunger strikers and she defeats them and they don't get their political recognition. They don't get any changes in the system until they call off their hunger strike.
01:10:31
Speaker
So in a very simplistic view, could say Margaret Thatcher won the battle of wills, whatever the the costs in terms of PR and then the propaganda struggle. But it's, you know, shitty I believe the better way putting it is she she won the battle, but she lost the war because of what happens, what follows after this.
01:10:45
Speaker
Okay, so first of all, I think recognising that it probably had created you know could have avoided this situation. The British government, up as soon as the hunger strikes were ended, it brought in a lot of the the changes to the prison system that the Irish government had been arguing for, you know trying to trying to avoid this situation, trying a more humanitarian way of running the system and avoiding abuse of prisoners and so on, to try and get short of political recognition. So my may that crucial point is the British government still did not, and the Irish government didn't support that either, recognition of the IRAs being political.
01:11:18
Speaker
But they they conceded a lot of the actual practical issues they were asking for in terms of freedom of association and to get education in the prisons and so on. So in practical terms, it got a lot of the changes short of political status.
01:11:32
Speaker
OK, so I want to keep stressing that point that the the British government said it wasn't going compromise on that that key point. But what happens after the hunger strikes does, I would argue, change Margaret Thatcher's mind about Northern Ireland.
01:11:46
Speaker
It's not the hunger strikes in and of themselves. It's the rise of Sinn Féin afterwards. So as I've said, you now have this position whereby Féin sees it can win votes, starts to regularly contest elections and compete against the SELP and starts to routinely win about a third of the Catholic vote. OK, so you had...
01:12:06
Speaker
It obviously wanted to win more, but it showed that at least a third of the Catholic population was prepared to vote for, you know, the political counterpart of the IRA. So this, again, continued this process of contradicting Margaret Thatcher. that There were lots of Catholics who did believe that, you know, it was legitimate to vote for this party and that the IRA were politically motivated.
01:12:28
Speaker
And I don't think Margaret Thatcher could ignore that. She couldn't ignore the rise of Sinn Féin, the rise of Sinn Féin in the Republic of Ireland as well. And It was massively destabilizing. And the key fear, not just for the British government, for the Irish government also, was the fear that if you allowed this to continue unchecked, Sinn Féin would continue to grow and eventually would start to out-poll and eclipse the SDLP.
01:12:52
Speaker
That was the real fear for the British government and the Irish government, because if Sinn Féin, as it wanted to, started to out-poll the SDLP, then it could claim we have majority support in the Catholic community for our arms struggle. It might escalate its campaign.
01:13:06
Speaker
And it would definitely use it for propaganda reasons to say, we are now the majority representative of the Catholic people of Northern Ireland who are repressed, et cetera, et cetera. So there was a real fear that this was like a growth of Sinn Féin, that you had to change your policy.
01:13:22
Speaker
So although it took a few years, I would argue that the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, so it's four years later, you now have the Thatcher government, uh,
01:13:34
Speaker
Signing an agreement with the Irish government, which was, again, I would argue is the start of the peace process. It's a very important step forward. What that agreement in very basic terms did is it said the Irish government is now going to have a voice in running Northern Ireland alongside the British government. The British government was still sovereign and was in charge and and and and made the final decision.
01:13:56
Speaker
But there would be an Irish voice. And what this was in a way was a kind of a substitute for what we have now is power sharing. because at that time, UNIS refused to accept even the SDLP, even a moderate nationalist party, to share power in Northern Ireland.
01:14:10
Speaker
So it was kind of the Anglo-Irish agreement was kind of a substitute for power sharing to say, OK, if UNIS won't accept power sharing and equality for nationalists, then the Irish government will perform that role and it will speak for nationalists.
01:14:22
Speaker
And in a way, it will have helped to try and avoid the mistakes the British government has made and the with the hunger strikes and so on. This is the real start of ah change in politics in Northern Ireland. Obviously, Unis were outraged by this, didn't want any Irish government role in Northern Ireland.
01:14:36
Speaker
But that's the start where you actually, you get things starting to move forward. it was very hard to see at the time. The violence continued for many, many years afterwards. But you now have an Irish voice in running Northern Ireland.
01:14:47
Speaker
And I would argue Margaret Thatcher did that in response to not simply the hunger strikes, but the aftermath, the rise of Sinn Féin, the political kind of dimension of republicanism couldn't be ignored. And Margaret Thatcher, to her credit,
01:15:01
Speaker
um recognised that and saw that she had to change British policy and indeed she was the Prime Minister I would argue who who who most radically changed British policy regards Northern Ireland in starting to to to grapple the situation and to recognise that the British government couldn't couldn't manage Northern Ireland without an Irish input without an input from Dublin so although it's a few years afterwards I would argue Margaret Thatcher she kind of as I say she she could argue she she wins the battle but she loses the war and the rise of republicanism but She also is ah smart enough to say we're going to have to change policy, not not to concede Sinn Féin, never accepts that that the IRA are political prisoners, none of that, but to say we're going to have to work with moderate nationalism.
01:15:44
Speaker
And if the UUP won't let the STLP have a voice, we'll work with the Irish government representing moderate nationalism. So I would argue that it does does change the game and that there is a ah fundamental change in British policy towards Northern Ireland as a result of the hunger strikes or the fallout of.
01:16:01
Speaker
And so you've explained, you know, some legislative changes in terms of the relationship between Britain and Ireland and and the power sharing, how it leads to in Northern Ireland, but also in terms of the impact, again, on parliamentary elections.
01:16:18
Speaker
There was ah legislation, as you described, rushed through so that prisoners could no longer be involved in any parliamentary elections. Could you describe that as well?
01:16:31
Speaker
There was, and and not just that. There were there were other responses to sininva Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin was still seen as, at this time, not being part of the solution. So so there was obviously the legislation to to bar any prisoner from standing.
01:16:42
Speaker
um It was much more difficult to to introduce legislation that barred someone standing simply for Sinn Féin, because, again, that would play into Republicans' hands of being seen as anti-democratic, is that you're saying, well, here you have someone who's trying to make ah trying to win votes to to operate democracy, and they're being denied their democratic voice.
01:17:01
Speaker
So yeah the the British government couldn't ban Sinn Féin from standing for elections. What it did do is somewhere kind of a halfway between that is it did ban Sinn Féin electoral and Republican representatives from speaking on the media in Northern Ireland or in the UK.
01:17:17
Speaker
So at large, so you have this very famous instances now of of of Gerry Adams and Martin McGinnis and so on not being allowed to be interviewed by the BBC.
01:17:28
Speaker
or by by ITV or any or by The Guardian or whatever it was. It so so mo was actually more more TV broadcasting, so TV and radio. So their voices were not allowed to be broadcasting.
01:17:39
Speaker
Now, again, there was that it led to kind of an own goal by ah the British state because um the legislation was such that the media, which was saw this as kind of a perversion of democracy, denying people who wanted to make a political argument, their their voice in the media,
01:17:55
Speaker
They got around this by dubbing the voices. There was this very famous episode some people but might remember in England of, you know, Gerry Adams would be on the TV, but it wouldn't be his voice. It would be dubbed by someone with a Belfast accent or such like.
01:18:08
Speaker
So it was a technical way of getting around that ah media broadcast. So you had, it kind of made a mockery of the system, really. So again, i would argue you had this awkward situation for the British government where it it was trying to stop Sinn Féin's rise.
01:18:22
Speaker
But the more it did this, the more anti-democratic it And the more, you know, because people in the media were saying, well, that's it that isn't you've got to listen to people's political voice. And therefore they they went around the legislation and and found ways to broadcast Sinn Féin's message, even if it wasn't Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness speaking in that way.
01:18:42
Speaker
And again, this was a huge own goal in America. When Gerry Adams famously got to visit the USA in 1994, when you get on to the peace process, at that point, Sinn Féin was still banned from
Did Thatcher's Policies Spark Northern Ireland's Peace Process?
01:18:52
Speaker
being on the airwaves. And yet he was able to go on.
01:18:54
Speaker
chat shows in America and again it almost mocked British democracy to say you had this political leader, that others would see him as a military leader, going on ah TV chat shows in America and being allowed to speak and American people saying well how is he banned in Britain this is meant to be the the home of democracy and the the mother of all parliaments and yet this guy is banned from the airwaves so you can see how that it was it was a very catch-22 position for the British government dealing with Sinn Féin with the IRA, it was more straightforward, as as you can say, they're terrorists, and you imprison them, and you suppress them.
01:19:30
Speaker
Sinn Féin was very different. And I would argue that's why, ultimately, you it was good that Margaret Thatcher, who introduced, but who, you know, made further mistakes with that, the the media legislation, ah I would argue, ultimately did start to change her policy in more fundamental ways to involve the Irish government that helps lead to the peace process. it's Again, it's a very complex thing. It's not like British government is doing everything right or everything wrong. You know, it's it's trying its best to manage its situation as best as it can.
01:19:57
Speaker
But I would give credit to Margaret Thatcher in saying, as well as the mistakes she makes, she she fundamentally changes policy to to now start to reform Northern Ireland. Because the point I would also make about the Anglo-Irish Agreement is you then had, with an Irish government input, radical reform of Northern Ireland, and particularly in terms of employment and discrimination, all the things that were still going on, that you started to change things and improve the position for Catholics.
01:20:21
Speaker
and to try and create a situation whereby, you know, Sinn Féin might now see ah that that politics would work rather than armed struggle. So all of this in a very, very complex way, I would argue, feeds into the peace process is that you start to get the British government being a bit more sensible about what's going on in Northern Ireland and not not simply saying everything that Sinn Féin is saying is wrong and that there's no discrimination, there clearly was discrimination, and to try and deal with the reality of what's going on in Northern Ireland.
01:20:50
Speaker
While all I should stress throughout is there's terrible violence going on. It's not a straightforward process where everything gets better. There's still horrific violence going on. but But if we look at it as historians, we can see the the hunger strikes and the rise of Sinn Féin and the responses, most of the responses led in ah in ah in a way that leads to the peace process and what we have in Northern Ireland today.
01:21:13
Speaker
This is the the kind of final question before we get on to the and analysis of the significance for democracy overall. um I wanted to ask that, did this campaign represent a shift in Republican strategy? So from armed struggle to electoral politics, and you've said that there was a continuation of violence, but was it ramped down from this moment onwards? Was there kind of seen as that's the new pathway to take to to actually yeah know get involved politics, talk to people um and and go about it in this differing strategy?
01:21:46
Speaker
Or was that change only visible later when these concessions were made from the British government as well? Again, it's good a good question because it's very hard to answer. It's not straightforward.
01:21:57
Speaker
So now you have this, what Republicans said they weren't giving up on violence. They have this dual strategy now, the ballot box and armour-like strategy. But Very quickly, although there was success to a degree in this, that Sinn Féin got a third of the vote, as I said, roughly, it kind of stalled at that level.
01:22:14
Speaker
The majority of Catholics still would not vote for Sinn Féin if it continued the armed struggle. So Bobby Sands was kind of an an exception to the rule where STLP voters might have felt they were trying to save his life and de-escalate the prison protests.
01:22:27
Speaker
Most STLP voters would still vote for the STLP, and the STLP continued now to to contest Sinn Féin and was in a real struggle with it. So There were limits. And indeed, you could argue that the violence was the IRA's violence was a limiting factor. there it was it Although there was ah success to this dual strategy, there was also a central contradiction because most Catholics would still not vote for Sinn Féin while the IRA continued its atrocities.
01:22:53
Speaker
And there were very famous instances of this, like the Inneskillen bombing in 1987, which you could see even maybe more moderate Republicans, you know, seeing that, you know, ordinary ah elderly Protestants who were slaughtered in that that bombing in 1987 in you know, that they abhorred this as well. And so, you know, that that affected Sinn Féin's votes is that, you know, some who might be Republican and want united Ireland still couldn't support that kind of atrocity. So there was kind of a a limiting factor there. There's the violence happening.
01:23:22
Speaker
limited how far Sinn Féin could win Catholic votes. So you could see that contradiction arguably fed into those in the Republican movement who are more political to say kind of what you've intimated there, that you know you need to be more strategic in the violence you use and maybe to avoid things like Inneskillen and if you can to do more economic damage. you know There were very famous bombings in London in the early 1990s and so on. So maybe some of this kind of fed out of that. mean We can't know the truth because of this would be a clandestine organisation. But I would argue leads it leads to this tension within republicanism, is that you have those like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness trying to lead it in a more political direction, but those who still see politics as surrender, and that you cannot give in to the British government, and that democracy is corrupt, and that you can't win by that means.
The Transition from Violence to Politics in Northern Ireland
01:24:11
Speaker
So that kind of explains why the peace process was so complex, and and it took a long time for people like Adams and McGuinness to try and say that there is a political way forward, and that they needed The British government also to move, you know, so that, you know, what kind of happens in the early 1990s is you get further movement of the British government now after Thatcher by John Major, famously the Downing Street Declaration in 1993, of kind of saying to Republicans and indeed to loyalists saying, if you give up the violence, you will have a seat at the talks table in the negotiation process.
01:24:42
Speaker
So again, people will argue about the date of the peace process and maybe say that 1993, that's the real birth. I would argue that the the genesis is there in the hunger strikes, the Anglo-Irish agreement and the shifts that are going on.
01:24:53
Speaker
But it's a process, a complex process, still a lot of violence and horrible acts going on, even in 1993. But you you have continued learning by all sides. So certainly by Republicans that they're trying to move to a more political direction, but also learning by the British and Irish governments.
01:25:09
Speaker
They're now i' saying, Well, actually, if there is side of Republicans that are moving to politics, should we try to reach out a hand to them? And that's kind of in very simplistic terms what was done in the early 1990s.
01:25:20
Speaker
Very cautiously, because there was a lot of distrust on both sides, is the British and Irish governments in the Downing Street Declaration said, Republicans, the IRA, if you cease fire, then Sinn Féin can sit at the talks table. And indeed, if loyalists cease fire, they will have a political representative, representatives will have a seat at the talks table.
01:25:40
Speaker
So you can see, not in a straightforward way that anyone could predict, it feeds into but the process that becomes the Northern Ireland peace process, whereby people accept you're going to have to do business with people like Sinn Féin and indeed the loyalist political representatives.
01:25:57
Speaker
You can't build peace in Northern Ireland by simply speaking to the STLP and the UUP and the moderate political parties. So again, there's ah there's a radical process of change going on there.
01:26:08
Speaker
that that thankfully leads into into the the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement and the settlement that we have in Northern Ireland today, i would argue. So going on to our final concluding questions.
01:26:22
Speaker
First of all, looking more broadly, are there any parallels in other democracies where similar protest candidates have succeeded?
01:26:32
Speaker
There is, you'd struggle, there there will obviously be parallels. I think you would struggle to find a situation like Northern Ireland that has been as successful. We've been very, very fortunate here in Northern Ireland.
01:26:44
Speaker
And it arguably reflects the fact that we're in Western Europe. It's a very unusual case. There are similar conflicts going on in the world, of course, right around the world today. And you could make parallels with the Basque country in Spain or with Colombia and so on.
01:26:56
Speaker
But I think Northern Ireland is the best example of where you've had a very broadly It's not perfect, but ah broadly a shift to to politics and a successful transition away from violence towards political a political settlement process. So Northern is a very powerful example of how you you can do that, okay? that theyre with the right With a lot of political effort and and patience and willingness to do brave and radical things that you can move beyond violence.
01:27:30
Speaker
So it's it's a very good example of that. um So it is the best example. And I think it's a very fortunate example because I mentioned a few times um at the USA and how that fed into support for the IRA, but also it fed into the peace process later on. Famously, you had Bill Clinton because of, again, because of the huge support in Irish America, while there were reasons why we we had such support in our peace process, the Good Friday Agreement was chaired by George Mitchell, a US senator appointed by Bill Clinton.
01:27:58
Speaker
So we we were very, very fortunate in the circumstances here. I think it's quite unique in that there's been a lot of support from from the USA, from the EU, because we're part of the EU. So a lot of funding for the peace initiatives, for cross-community and cross-border, all of these things fed into the peace process.
01:28:15
Speaker
So i'm always like I'm always very careful when I compare Northern Ireland and say, does it have lessons for other places? Because we're very, very fortunate with that support. But the basic principle, yeah, I mean,
01:28:26
Speaker
Probably the exact the obvious example would be the Middle East today is that you know you have a similar thing where um you know Hamas is yeah on a bigger scale. It's obviously a bigger conflict and even more controversial, much worse violence.
01:28:40
Speaker
But you could argue there are some similar dynamics there is that Hamas won the Gaza election in 2006 and six and you know has got a political mandate of sorts. Now, that hasn't been election since.
01:28:51
Speaker
It's more complex than I can go into here. but the similar point, you know, that that that that an armed group has some political support. And the response to Hamas's victory in 2006 was broadly, yeah the USA and the EU and the Israeli government refused to do business any business with it.
01:29:09
Speaker
And, you know, that experts in the Middle East might argue that that fed into the situation where, you know, Gaza was treated as, you know, Hamas became political priors and Gaza was treated as as basically, you know, blockaded, you know, so aid and so on and and and economically blockaded.
01:29:26
Speaker
And that's fed into the festering of the problem that we still see the repercussions of today. So there would be those who would argue that that was not a sensible decision, is that, you you know, whatever your views of Hamas, you know, that when it won an election in 2006, that, you know, a more sensible strategy would have been to try to see, can you steer Hamas like Sinn Féin and the Republican movement was steered towards a my more political process. again Again, I respect that that will be very, very controversial for some people to accept.
01:29:53
Speaker
But if you're going to, and and it is more complex, it's it's a bigger, more geopolitically complex conflict. But if there's a lesson to be learned from Northern Ireland, it's certainly that you cannot simply deny those who get political votes to say that they are completely illegitimate.
01:30:08
Speaker
However much we might disapprove morally of what they do in terms of armed struggle, So there might be some lessons, but again, I would say Northern Ireland is a very fortunate situation because of where it is in Western Europe. So the final question for you is, does this election still resonate in Northern Ireland today? Does it still have an impact on legislation?
01:30:32
Speaker
In a sense, in that, that ah yes, Sinn Féin is now the the main party in Northern Ireland. It leads the government here. It's part of it, as we have a power sharing system along with the DUP. But we now have a Sinn Féin first minister.
01:30:44
Speaker
um It's the main opposition in the Republic of Ireland now. So Sinn Féin would argue, as it wants to get rid of the line of the partition and unite Ireland, that if there was no united Ireland, it would be the main party in Ireland today and would run the government right across Ireland, which is obviously what it wants to do ultimately. And it's on a, you know, it would claim it's on a political pathway to do that.
01:31:03
Speaker
So obviously it still has political ramifications in that, again, you know, Sinn Féin has become, has transferred to becoming essentially a normal political party. Now, not everyone will accept that. And there are still of controversies. and And I mentioned earlier on today, you're talking about the legacy still today on the, I believe on the headquarters, certainly until the last time I saw it on the headquarters of Sinn Féin's main building in West Belfast is a picture of Bobby Sands. So you can see that they trace, you know, their legitimacy and their position, political position and their dominance today back to that, that, that,
01:31:39
Speaker
ah bobby's hand standing for election at that time but it's seen very differently again on both sides that sides of the community here we're still a very divided society so you've had um instances of of shin fein local councils and so on where it's tried to uh name say a local park after a hunger striker or an ira member but and obviously unis and particularly unis victims or even if you're you might not be a unis may be a catholic victim of ira violence you know abhor that you say well you're celebrating ah people who were terrorists, you know, so you still have ideologically that that same debate, thankfully, on much lower scale, without the the ramifications and the continued conflict going on.
01:32:20
Speaker
But you still have people who have very different views of what Bobby Sands represented, whether he was a freedom fighter and a hero for Republicans, or whether he was a terrorist and a criminal from from unison, other victims of IRA violence.
01:32:33
Speaker
So that That debate has not been resolved, and I see it my classroom is still today. You will have very different views of what Sinn Féin represents and what its origins with the hunger strikes.
01:32:44
Speaker
But it all again, I would stress the more positive side of that is it shows that whatever your views of of Bobby Sands and others and the reasons they were in prison, that that process towards a more political strategy has led to a piece here, not not not a perfect piece. No no system is perfect.
01:33:02
Speaker
but a largely successful democracy. um So I think think there are still important lessons there for how how we we we can't treat, you know, what what happened with the hunger strikes is to treat something as a black and white issue, that it's simple. every but One side is wrong, one side is right.
01:33:17
Speaker
And and that that clearly shows that it's not straightforward and we have to deal with the complexity of this if we're going to get political progress. Well, Thank you very much for your time today, Peter.
01:33:28
Speaker
um And just kind of going through it Bobby Sands' election was a striking moment in British and Irish political history, one that continues to raise questions about representation, protest, and the limits of democracy.
01:33:40
Speaker
It's a reminder that by-elections can be more than just local contests. They can become moments of national significance. So as I said there, thank you so much for your time today, Peter.
01:33:52
Speaker
Thank you. It's good to speak to you.
01:34:03
Speaker
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01:34:17
Speaker
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