Remembering Bobby Sands

The hunger strikes were a watershed in modern Irish history. They are credited with accelerating the growth of Sinn Féin. They did much more than that. They helped to create the conditions which later gave birth to the peace process. For that reason, if for no other, at the beginning of another new year and yet another effort to advance the peace process, the events of that time should be studied and discussed by anyone interested in learning lessons of our past. But for the privileged few who knew the hunger strikers, for former Blanket men or Armagh women, for their families and for all of us who worked for the political prisoners, this 25th anniversary of the deaths of the H Block hunger strikers will be a personal as well as a political remembrance.