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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
5 4 September 2016
I
t seems significant that the documentary
film 'Bobby Sands: 66 Days' has come out
this year, the centenary of the 1916 Rising.
Brendan J Byrne’s impressive account of
the H-Block hunger strike of 1981 claims,
through its interviewees and in its own narra-
tion, that nothing was quite the same in this
country after those traumatic 66 days during
which Bobby Sands starved himself to death.
The same of course is frequently said of the
Rising – Ireland before and Ireland after the
seven days of the rebellion in Dublin were two
very different places.
There are merits to both claims. In one of the
many interview contributions by Fintan O’Toole
in 'Bobby Sands: 66 Days', he suggests that we
can view Sands’ hunger strike as marking the
beginning of the end of the physical-force tradi-
tion in Irish republicanism. The argument goes
like this: the enormous propaganda success of
the strike demonstrated to everyone, most par-
ticularly to the IRA themselves, that you ‘get
into people’s minds’ more effectively by dem-
onstrating your readiness to suffer than by
demonstrating your capacity to kill and maim;
the moment you admit your fascination for
Sands, republicanism has won.
When the half-dead Sands won the Ferman-
agh-South Tyrone by-election, he broke the
longstanding boycott of the Westminster par-
liamentary system that had for decades been a
defining feature of republican strategy.
Granted, when Gerry Adams was elected MP
two years later, he abstained from taking his
seat, a policy observed to this day by Sinn Féin’s
four (non-)sitting MPs. But the fact remains that
from 1981 until the present, mainstream repub-
licanism has demonstrated a readiness to
engage with the British political system.
It would be a strange documentary that did
not talk up the centrality of the event that is its
subject. But the film does succumb to the
temptation to position the Sands strike as the
event that shaped all that followed, and it even
suggests by its shifting back and forth along
the timeline of the strike and the Troubles that
the hunger strike was the culmination of all that
had come before.
1916 is often thought of in the same way.
There is no doubt that what happened in Easter
Week was crucial, but we say this because of
the many events that cascaded in its wake: the
surge of support for Sinn Féin in the 1918 elec-
tion, the mobilisation of the IRA across the
country in the years following, the readiness of
the British government to withdraw, and so on.
If none of these other events had taken place,
then 1916 would be as relatively non-pivotal as
the also unsuccessful uprisings of 1867, 1848,
1803 and 1798.
This is not to say that these other events were
inconsequential, but it is to point out that only
one of these rebellions is generally known
about and the centenary and bicentenary cele-
brations for those earlier events are small fry
compared to the full-scale, countrywide com
-
memorations of 2016.
The broader point here is: when we hear a
historical event described as pivotal, a water-
shed, a key moment, a revolution, a turning
point, a tipping point, we are being exposed to
what the social historian Richard Sennett has
called “a view of human history based on the
life cycle of the moth”. Abrupt transformations
simply do not happen. The Ireland that existed
before the 1981 hunger strikes did not stop and
was not replaced by a different Ireland. The
same goes for 1916.
A useful metaphor for an alternative way of
viewing historical causes and effects is the rhi-
zome, which is a botanical term for a part of
certain plants that send out roots and shoots
in a non-symmetrical, apparently higgledy-pig-
gledy way. Rhizomes have been contrasted,
most notably by the philosophers Félix Guattari
and Gilles Deleuze, with plants that observe a
more regular pattern of a central stem or trunk
that grows side shoots in a predictable way. A
rhizomatic view of history does not search for
a before/after logic, or even necessarily a
cause/effect logic to historical events, instead
viewing them as being connected in a non-lin-
ear and networked way, producing feedback
effects and disruptive interpretations of past
and future events.
1916 and 1981 are indeed important years in
the history of this island, but the rebellion of
1916 becomes the canonical Easter Rising only
when viewed backwards in time from the van-
tage of events that followed.
And among the events that have followed
1916 are the commemorations of 2016. The fact
that these events are being celebrated so effu-
sively this year casts new, retrospective
significance upon them. 1916 had occupied a
venerated position in the emotional history of
nationalism for many decades, but had slipped
We are not required by the
film to consider sectarian
inequality, the corruption
of London administrations,
underinvestment, the
racism of Paisleyism,
centuries of colonialism, or
cronyism in all walks of life
CULTURE
The 1916 Rising
'Bobby Sands: 66 Days' impressively
connects culture and history though it
periodises the Troubles and fails to address
the problems that led to the unrest
by Cormac Deane
rhizome
September 2016 5 5
into disrepute in the south in particular as the
revisionist account of Irish political violence
became standard.
But the 1916 that is celebrated now is rather
different from how it was remembered in 1966.
With the distance of time and the commodifica-
tion of our own historical experience, the new
1916 has receded sufficiently from our current
political dispensation to become a quaint,
sepia-toned, costume-wearing, heritage event
festooned with interactive, touristic, multime-
dia, virtual experiences. The 1916 rhizome, in
other words, continues to send out new shoots.
'Bobby Sands: 66 Days' does a good job of
connecting previous events of the Troubles to
the day-by-day experience of the Sands hunger
strike. As such, it is a decent history of the
period. But its major assertion that things
changed pivotally with Sands means that it
fairly rushes past the events that followed 1981.
The over-emphasis on Sands and his strike
means that the other nine people who starved
themselves to death in prison that year are not
all named. The film gives the impression that
the conflict was effectively brought to an end
by a combination of Sands’ political coup plus
the peace-process nous of Adams, aided by the
briefly seen Albert Reynolds, Bertie Ahern and
Tony Blair.
Fair enough, these are indeed the events that
followed, in some shape or form. But this docu-
mentary periodises the Troubles, making the
events seem distant and archival. The funda-
mental problems that led to unrest in the north
are not addressed, with the result that we are
not required when watching this film to consider
sectarian inequality, the corruption of succes-
sive London administrations, decades of
underinvestment, the inflammatory racism of
Paisleyism, electoral isolation within British
politics, the legacy of centuries of disposses-
sion and colonialism, and cronyism in all walks
of life from police and planning to parliament.
Many of these and other problems still remain
in various measures, and they contribute to
ongoing and possibly future conflict that will
come as a surprise to those who fail to acknowl-
edge them.
With the Troubles receding into a period past
of grainy filmstock, Ford Cortinas and flared
trousers, its slogans – ‘Smash H-Block’, ‘Don’t
Let them Die!’, ‘Tiocfaidh Ár Lá’, ‘Ulster says
No!’ – have also become dated, firmly anchored
in their era. Rhizomatically, the big one – ‘Brits
Out’ – has undergone a strange revision this
year in the form of ‘Brexit’.
This column is not the first one to point out
that the consequences of Brexit are unknown
and unknowable. Nor is it the first to struggle
to work out what the motivations were for many
of the Leave voters. But it is hard to ignore the
feeling that Northern Ireland, and Scotland, are
little more than unwanted encumbrances for
the majority English, and that the feeling runs
in both directions. For all the blood spilt during
the Troubles, for all the politicking and negoti-
ating, it may turn out that the thing that finally
releases the hold of London on part of this
island is the insouciant indifference of the Eng-
lish for their unloved fellow subjects, the
unionists of Ulster.
This outcome sits uncomfortably with the
legacy of Bobby Sands. Viewing things this way
certainly diminishes the significance and effec-
tiveness of Irish nationalism and republicanism,
which may have been little more than an irritant
that it took England decades to get round to
swatting away with the same swipe of the arm
that has demolished its own constitution and
ties to Europe.
The total irrelevance and incoherence of
unionism in these events, however viewed, is
striking. When unionists appear in 'Bobby
Sands: 66 Days', they are political retards,
vengeful, and incapable of empathy (holding
placards saying ‘Let him die’ outside the
H-Block prison gates; sitting primly in hope
-
lessly dated front rooms, unable to comprehend
the sacrifices of the hunger strikers; following
a sweating, frenzied marching band leader;
demonstrating the arch-villain/child molester
look with cola-shaded spectacles, and so on).
It is ironic that the stereotype of inbred, unso-
phisticated, atavistic Irishness has now become
grafted onto the unionist population. While the
rest of us in the south are renegotiating our his-
torical narratives through the means of
interactive multimedia experiences, etc. etc.,
the Ulster unionist remains stuck in amber,
more despised by the English than ever. Lead-
erlessly moving into political oblivion,
outplayed and outmanoeuvred by nationalism
and republicanism, unionism as it appears in
this film is decidedly on the losing side of the
culture wars in the northern political struggle.
And perhaps its greatest achievement is in
showing how Sands’ strike and the propaganda
machine that accompanied it was part of this
culture war, transforming his support base from
a paltry few thousand marchers early in 1981 to
the astonishing figure of 100,000 people who
attended his funeral a few short months later.
Cormac Deane lectures in film and media in
the Institute of Art, Design and Technology
The moment
you admit your
fascination
for Sands,
republicanism
has won
Sends out roots and shoots non-symmetrically
