prisoner's n great pain.
his skull.
and politically clear-headed to the last.
His confidence in his principles and in the supDort of the Irish people seems to have given him a cluty.
'He is prepared for the end', his mother said last Thursday as she came out of Long Kesh concentration camp after visiting her son.
She said this calmly and Icelar. although throughout the hunger strike she Wan visibly overwhelmed with worry and grief. Her wan but calm appearance seems SADICA LEC resolution of a tragic conflict. Honour She knew that her son was dying; that he had to die to maintain his honour and the honour of his people.
Like the resolution of a classical tragedy the end of Sands' hunger strike producing a terrible clarity n which the humanity and self-sacrifice of the Irish fighters stands starkly counterposed to the hyDOCTISV and cynicism, cruelty and arrogance the British rulers and their allies.
The Irish side is symbolised by Bobby Sands, a gifted and sensitive young back against against the system that first drove him then drove him from his livelihood; by his mother, an ordinary working class selfless acceptance of her son's sacrifice.
The side represented by the stony reiteration of Prime Minister Thatcher that THE DRAMA of Bobby Sands' hunger strike is conclusion. The Irish life is rapidly ebbing away. Bobby is reported now to be blind and His eyes are dimmed with the red fog of burst blood vessels and appear sunk deep into But he has remained determined Sands is a criminal, even after he has been shown to have the sympathy of the electorate •r'erangar and South Tyrone and when the whole world can see that Sands has the support or the masses of oppressed people.
Taunt Over the radio and on TV here could hear Northern Atkins and prime minister Thatcher say they will concede political status to a 'criminal' such as Sands, and hear British shouting their approval.
This was an unbearable taunt to even the most conservative and conciliatory sections of. the Irish editorial on ei In an on May the Irish Press, the daily paper most closely associated with the governing party in the South, stated:
'Safely ensconsed in Was morter hear, British MPs may chorus hear' while Mr Atkins doles out the platitudes buttressed They were seized when an H Block banner was unturled during the march.
Those held include John Peoples Democracy candidate in the Northern Ireland local elections. John was detained for the entire weekend.
women's trade union group and arrested Ann Hope trade union member of the Communist Party.
by Mrs Thatcher's reiteration of "not an inch", , but LIC tact Bobby MacAnulty, Police also confiscated the banner of a official and Prisoners' supporters on the streets in Dungañnon at the and of Sands got more votes in being elected to the House Commons than Mrs Thatcher, 10,000 more and the rest of the world is shouting "hear, hear", shouting "listen, listen", from New Delhi to Los Angeles.
Something has moved over Northern There is no status quo to go back to. The genie of discontent will be returned to the lamp by a few sly rubs at England's legal code.
The editorial denounced the British administration in Northern Ireland.
'Mr Atkins certainly March has some cheek when he can stand up in the House of Commons and appeal to people not to respond to provocations, while at the same time residing over an army and police operation that is setting in motion a form of internment. Tension 'So far 60 known H Block activists have been picked up under seven-day detention orders, which means they can be released and picked up again in a week's time and so on.
'Could anything be more Catholic population at • LO the DUNCAN time when tensior rises like a tangible thing in the North as Bobby Sands' life ebbs away?' The arrogant taunts of the British Conservatives were followed by a jackallike yap made the Labour Party spokesperson on Northern Ireland Don Concannon He visited Sands on Friday calling on him to give up because he would get no support in the Labour Party.
Sands did not give his the Concannon just marched into the dying man's cell.
When he emerged he LICSS.
the government saying •to the Irish people in effect is:
'We can do anything to like and there is nothing you can do about It. It corresnonds to the verse of well-known Orange SOUR goes: 'We're up to our knees in Fenian blood, surrender or you'll die.
As I write this, British soldiers are standing on a flats balcony 'facing in the block my window OI and underneath a walkway on the ground. They seem to have been moved In deliberately to draw the fire of the population.
They have been kept standing there for hours, and they are being stoned by a crowd of children, some of them with rocks in one hand and lollipops in tue oner. 1 can see one year old apparently trying to decide whether he would rather bounce his ball or throw a rock.
Groups of kids accompanied by small yapping dogs, are charging armoured vehicles and solders in riot gear, ding volleys stones harmlessly off them.
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Belfast, Monday coming Republican
Belfast arrests TEN people were arrested during the May Day demonstration in Belfast on Saturday.