Back Home in Derry

Today is the 28th anniversary of Bobby Sands death. One year longer than he lived. I hadn't given it much thought at all until I clicked on a link in Boards and found my way to the lyrics of “ Back home in Derry”. Bobby Sands wrote that. I hadn't known until today. Maybe music draws on my heart more than politics on my mind but it made me re-examine my views or rather my lack of them on Bobby Sands.

Bobby Sands has become an icon. He is a lot of things to a lot of people. A terrorist, a poet, a criminal, an elected representative, a martyr, a freedom fighter, a fanatical political kamikaze breaking onto the bough of Thatcher's conservative government, but behind it all when you whittle away the romanticism, Bobby Sands was a person. A fellow human being who wrote that beautiful mournful lament and laid down his life for the courage of his convictions in the most agonising of ways. That takes a strength of will few of us could contemplate.

I wasn't even born when Bobby and his fellow nine dead hunger strikers took up their protest for political prisoner status. Their views seem as alien to me now as the Catholic civil rights repressions in the North that preceded it. Suffice to say they were a product of their interactions with their environment in much the same way their environment was to become a product of their actions. I'm not going into a subjective debate on the rights and wrongs, the scoring system in blood that has raged in the North since 1969. I'm simply not qualified. I'm trying to deduce, when they dust down the annuals of history what effect Bobby and his fellow hunger strikers had on the North and the rest of us that share this island. 

The immediate after effect of Bobby Sands and his fellow prisoner's deaths was polorisation. Riots, murders and anarchy reigned. Divisions were drawn that still exist to this day. However, what is more subtle and also more pertinent to this day is the democratic election of Bobby Sands to Westminster as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Bobby's election gave the IRA a new weapon in the north. A democratic mandate. It is this weapon that has eventually usurped the rest of their arsenal and has give hope and peace to the North. It was in Bobby's election that many of the Nationalists cut their teeth in politics and they've been grinding them in a fury ever since. 

I'm drawn back to the lyrics of his lament. The story of the 1803 rising. Of prisoners brought to Van Halen's land in chains and lamenting their home. There are many that chose to leave the North during the troubles, but to many, it was, and is, for all its flaws, home. Home is a word that resonates in the heart greater than all others. I think of Bobby Sands writing those lyrics and contemplating leaving it behind. Leaving Derry for England to his young wife and son, but he chose to stay, and eventually, he chose to die. It is impossible to know what he would have made of the consequences of his actions. Only Bobby Sands would know that, but the political mediation infrastructure that was seeded in his election eventually bore fruit to the current assembly and brought hope to the North. It is a legacy few of us could have accomplished in 27 short years.

R.I.P

In 1803 we sailed out to sea
Out from the sweet town of Derry
For Australia bound if we didn't all drown
And the marks of our fetters we carried
In the rusty iron chains we sighed for our wains
As our good women we left in sorrow
As the mainsails unfurled our curses we hurled
On the English and thoughts of tomorrow

VERSE 2

at the mouth of the Foyle, bid farewell to the soil
as down below decks we were lying
O'Doherty screamed, woken out of a dream
by vision of bold Robert dying
the sun burnt cruel, as we dished out the gruel
Dan O'Connor was down with a fever
sixty rebels today, bound for Botany bay
how many will reach their receiver

Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry
Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry

VERSE3

I cursed them to hell as our bow fought the swell
Our ship danced like a moth in the firelight
White horses rode high as the devil passed by
Taking souls to Hades by twilight.
Five weeks out to sea we were now forty-three
Our comrades we buried each morning.
In our own slime we were lost in a time.
Endless night without dawning.

Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry
Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry

VERSE 4

Van Dieman's land is a hell for a man
To live out his life in slavery
Where the climate is raw and the gun makes the law
Neither wind nor rain cares for bravery
Twenty years have gone by and I've ended my bond
My comrades' ghosts walk behind me
A rebel I came and I'm still the same
On the cold winds of night you will find me

Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry
Oh Oh Oh Oh I wish I was back home in Derry
oh oh oh oh I wish i was back home in Derry