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3 unusual facts about Bobby Sands


Dick's Picks Volume 13

Bob Weir dedicated "He's Gone" to Bobby Sands, a member of the British Parliament who died on a hunger strike while imprisoned in HM Prison Maze on May 5, 1981.

It's Going to Happen!

It's Going to Happen! was performed on Top of the Pops on 5 May 1981, the day one of the hunger strikers, Bobby Sands, died.

Representation of the People Act 1981

This Act was passed following the election to the Westminster Parliament of a hunger-striker, Bobby Sands, in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election, April 1981, while he was serving a long term of imprisonment.


Republican plot

Notable Republican plots include those at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin and Milltown Cemetery in Belfast, where the hunger-strikers Bobby Sands and Joe McDonnell are buried, and which was the site of an attack on a Republican funeral in 1988 by a loyalist paramilitary, Michael Stone.

Sands McSwiney

Sands McSwineys were founded in 1986, being named using an amalgam of the names of hunger strikers Bobby Sands and Terence MacSwiney.


see also

Artistic reactions to the 1981 Irish hunger strike

Although the Undertones were reluctant to engage in politics, after the death of Sands in 1982, guitarist Damian O'Neill wore a black armband honouring Bobby Sands when the band performed on Top of the Pops.

In Bobby Sands desfallece en el muro, Chilean poet Carmen Berenguer draws parallels between Chile under Pinochet and Northern Ireland of 1981, adopting Sands's voice in the first person.