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Vol. Bobby Sands
Bobby Sands was born in 1954 in Rathcoole, a predominantly loyalist district of north Belfast. His twenty-seventh birthday fell on the ninth day of his sixty-six day hunger-strike.
The sectarian realities of ghetto life materialised early in Bobby's life when at the age of seven his family were forced to move home owing to loyalist intimidation even as early as 1962.
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Bobby Sands
Of this time Bobby himself later wrote: "1 was only a working-class boy from a nationalist ghetto, but it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom, I shall not settle until I achieve the liberation of my country, until Ireland becomes a sovereign independent socialist republic."
In June 1972, the family were intimidated out of their home in Doonbeg Drive, Rathcoole, and moved into the newly-built Twinbrook estate on the fringe of nationalist West Belfast.
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At eighteen years of age Bobby joined the Republican Movement. In an article he wrote for Republican News he said: "My life now centred around sleepless nights and stand-bys, dodging the Brits and calming nerves to go out on operations. But the people stood by us. The people not only opened the doors of their homes to lend us a hand but they opened their hearts to us. I learned that without the people we could not win and I knew that I owed them everything."
October 1972, he was arrested. Four hand-guns were found in a house he had stayed in and he was charged with possession. He spent the next three years in the cages of Long Kesh where he had political prisoner status. During this time Bobby read widely and taught himself Irish which he was later to teach the other blanket men in the H-Blocks. Released in 1976 Bobby returned to his family in Twinbrook. He reported back to his local unit and went straight back into the continuing struggle. Bobby set himself to work tackling the social issues which affected the Twinbrook area. Here he became a community activist.
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