The martyrdom of Mr Sands
In the end, nothing moved him: not the appeal from the Pope's special envoy and private secretary; not the visits of Mr Blaney, Miss Sile de Valera and Mr O'Connell from the Dublin Parliament; not the arguments of Mr Concannon, Labour's shadow Irish Secretary; and not the prayers of all who feared his death would bring new violence to Ulster. Nothing moved the British government, either: it permitted Very generous access to Robert Sands, but it would not give him the political status he sought on behalf of his fellow IRA prisoners in the Maze and himself. Young Mr Sands succeeded in starving himself to death, dying in the Maze prison at 1.17 on the morning of Tuesday 5 May, having refused food since the end of February. During the 66 days of his self-starvation, he won the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election on 10 April, with over 30,000 electors voting for him, despite the detestation which most of the Catholics in Northern Ireland are supposed to feel for the IRA and its bombs and guns.
Sands chose to die; he insisted upon it His suicide was wilful, deliberate and political. At any time until he lapsed into a coma he could have called off his fast. He did not lack excuses, and his church instructed him that he was morally wrong to seek to take his life. But he heeded no arguments and showed himself to be inflexible. He is the first prisoner to fast to death in Northern Ireland, and in his death he doubtless felt he was criticising and shaming previous IRA men who had, for one reason or another, called off their fasting in time to save their lives. Mr Sands accordingly must be regarded as a young man who had great determination and great courage: foolish, as well as dishonest, to pretend otherwise. He, not the British Government or anybody else, was responsible for his own death. He, and his IRA superiors who encouraged him to die, are the authors of his death and must bear responsibility for the aftermath from which Ulster will now inevitably suffer.
This said, in the eyes of most of the world, Sands will appear to be the victim of British oppression and thereafter (although the world will not put it this way) an involuntary hero, an involuntary martyr. This British government, like its predecessors, has utterly failed to convince the world that the British armed presence in Ulster is there to keep the Protestants and the Catholics apart, to prevent them indulging themselves in a civil war in which tens of thousands would tear each other to death. The world does
not accept the orthodox English view that British troops are in Ulster as a matter of duty rather than of interest, and this is in its way understandable, for it is undeniable that the original Scottish settlement in Ulster furthered the English interest which, historically, has always been to dominate the British Isles. It may well not be in the English interest any longer to do so; but until this is acknowledged and accepted, the world is unlikely to see duty as the imperative which keeps our troops in Ulster'.
If there is no benefit or interest but only duty then we are bound to wonder whether the involvement is worth it, given the alien nature of Ulster and the absence of any discernible reciprocal duty or sense of obligation towards Britain on the part of Ulster's principal Protestant leaders and those whose loyalty they command. Loyalty should be two-sided; and unrequited duty is an expensive moral luxury, particularly when it involves us being cast in the role of oppressor. It might have been our duty to remain in Palestine, or India, longer than we did, to keep the Jews and Arabs, and the Hindus and Moslems, from each other's throats; and maybe the timing of our withdrawals from the obligations of Empire was not all it should have been: but we did not see it as in our interest to remain, so we got out, letting duty go hang; and who now argues that we should have stayed? The United Kingdom incorporates Ulster as it never incorporated Palestine or India, it is true; but then the United Kingdom used to incorporate all of Ireland until the Irish Free State and a six-county Ulsker were brought into existence.
Sands's death will prove nothing and.help nothing. It has already provoked rioting and new mayhem, and it may turn out to be as fecund a fertiliser of violence as the chiefs of the IRA hope. At best his corpse will fall upon stony ground. But whatever its consequences, we may be sure that Irish republicanism has gained a new martyr and hero and one who in the process of dying was elected a member of the Westminster Parliament. Britain cannot say that he did not represent his people. Whatever happens, his death is a British defeat just as much as it is an IRA victory, and will be seen as such in a world all too ready to see oppressive interest rather than disinterested duty determining Britain's Irish policy. The days of that policy remain very long, but they are days nonetheless that are limbered and will sooner or later be counted. In that calendar, the name of Mr Robert Sands, MP, will figure.
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