ONLY A WORKING CLASS BOY - SANDS - BOBBY SANDS

Bobby Sands 

Biography by Bio

Activist (1954–1981)


Bobby Sands was an Irish nationalist who led a hunger strike in prison in 1981. He was elected Member of Parliament during the strike and died May 5, 1981. 

Synopsis

Born in 1954, Bobby Sands grew up in Belfast under the cloud of nationalist and loyalist divisions. He joined the Republican Movement when he was 18 and was soon arrested and imprisoned for possessing a firearm. A second arrest in 1976 led to a 14-year-sentence. In prison, Sands embarked on a long hunger strike that led to his death. During the strike he was elected a Member of Parliament.
Early Years


A hero among Irish nationalists, Robert Gerard "Bobby" Sands was born in Belfast, Ireland on March 9, 1954. Bobby Sands was the oldest of four children born to John and Rosaleen Sands, and the couple's first son. At an early age, Sands's life was affected by the sharp divisions that shaped the north of Ireland. At the age of 10, he was forced to move with his family out of their neighborhood due to repeated intimidation by loyalists.


"I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto," Sands later wrote about his childhood. "But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom."


Loyalist intimidation proved to be a theme in Sands' life. At the age of 18, he was forced out of his job as an apprentice car builder. (He had joined the National Union of Vehicle Builders just two years before.) Not long after, he and his family had to move again, as a result of political trouble.

Activism


The steady number of conflicts pushed Sands to join the Republican Movement in 1972. His ties to the movement soon captured the attention of the authorities, and later that year, he was arrested and charged with possessing firearms in his house. He spent the next three years of his life in prison. Upon his release, Sands immediately returned to the Republican Movement. He signed on as a community activist in Belfast's rough Twinbrook area, quickly becoming a popular go-to person for a range of issues affecting the neighborhood.


In late 1976, authorities arrested Sands again, this time in connection with a bombing that had taken place at a large furniture company and an ensuing gun battle. After weathering a brutal interrogation and then a court proceeding that offered up questionable evidence connecting Sands and three others to the attack, a judge sentenced Sands to 14 years in prison at Her Majesty's Prison's Maze, Long Kesh, a facility used to house Republican prisoners from 1971 until 2000, located just outside of Belfast.


As a prisoner, Sands's stature only grew. He pushed hard for prison reforms, confronting authorities, and for his outspoken ways he was frequently given solitary confinement sentences. Sands's contention was that he and others like him, who were serving prison sentences, were actually prisoners of war, not criminals as the British government insisted.
Hunger Strike


Beginning on March 1, 1981, Sands led nine other Republican prisoners into the H Block section of the Maze, Long Kesh, on a hunger strike that would last until death. Their demands ranged from allowing prisoners to wear their own clothes to permitting visits and mail, all of which were central in improving the inmates' way of life.


Unable to move authorities to give in to his requests, and unwilling himself to end his hunger strike, Sands's health began to deteriorate. During the first 17 days of the strike alone, he lost 16 pounds.


A hero among his fellow nationalists, Sands was elected as a Member of Parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. To the shock of Unionists, he won more than 52 percent of the vote in the north Ireland. While cheered by the victory, Sands seem to know that he was destined to be a martyr.
Death and Legacy


Only days after slipping into a coma, on the morning of May 5, 1981, Sands died from malnutrition due to starvation. He was 27 years old, and had refused to eat for 66 days. He'd become so fragile over his final weeks, he spent his final days on a water bed to protect his deteriorating and fragile body. At time of his death, Sands was married to Geraldine Noade, with whom he had one son, Gerard.


While loyalists dismissed Sands's death, others were quick to recognize its significance. Over the next seven months, nine other IRA supporters died on a hunger strike. Eventually, the British government gave proper political recognition to the prisoners, many of them earning their release under the 1998 Bad Friday agreement.

COPS: Whatever You Say, Say Nothing

We can read a lot these days, especially with social media and the likes of Irish Blog around. Usually for me the important stuff, is between the lines, and while I read everything with a pinch of salt, it still usually, comes back to that Shakespearian saying, 'This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man,' nevertheless, it's still important to read. In the same sense. like what I hear, I listen, examine and process, as it relates to my own experience. My politics and way of life, have always been off the beaten track and as result, I have had numerous encounters with police from several juristictions. From my experience, I have learned, that the first important thing, dealing with police, is to pass the attirude test. Genuine respect is earned, while civic respect is an important component in any relationship, particularly at the outset of any engagement, unless it has been abused.

Because of British occupation of part of Ireland, there is a policy among genuine Irish republicans, when stopped at their numerous checkpoints, to furnish the paramilitary police, with the bare minimum requirements of the 'law,' which sometimes leads to hilarious encounters. Like one time my friends and I were stopped, something like half a dozen times on Hill Street in Newry, which incidentally doesn'r have a hill, and we gave our names in Irish, as was a basic requirement. When asked where we were coming from, because the police were almost always sectarian, we said we were coming from mass, and when we were asked where we were going, we said to another mass. Often we were also frisked and searched. Anyway by the sixth stop on the same street, my friend was fed up with the searching, so rather than let them physically touch him anymore, he proceeded to strip off, item by item, until he was naked on the busy street, whereupon he then displayed his arse to them, and asked them if the wanted to look up his anus. By this time a lot of ould dolls doing their shopping had gathered around in solidarity berating the British paramilitary police, and there was the makings of a decent riot, so the RUC told us to, "fuck off"  Warning; only try on a busy shopping street.

In all of Ireland after 800 years of Colonialism, whic still continues, there is a basic irreverence to anything in a uniform, on a public street. This gets a bit schizophrenic in private police stations, where there is ample historical evidence of schitzophrenia and the evidence, of all forms of rebellion, is, that there has always been considerable penetration by British intelligence, right up to several parts, of the most senior leadership of revolution. In my own case, I have been taken into formal interrogation on more than a dozen occasions. I remeber on one of my earliers encounters, when I would not talk at all to them, one interrogator said to me, that civilty costs nothing and for some strange reason, despite our code of silence, this hit a nerve, which I have never forgotten. Sometime the interrogations at that time, would last for a week during which I was isolated. I remember during one interrogation, where explicit photogrpahs were thrown in front of me and I was asked what I thought about them, and I replied, that they were evidence of a war going on in Ireland, at which point, one of the interrogators, appeared to go bexerk and had to be dragged out of the room, kicking and screaming by his colleagues.

It was dirty war and still is, albeit of lower intensity currently, but it will intensify again if Britissh Occupation continues, of that, there can be little doubt, because the much touted 'peace process' is fake, built on a false foundation of collaboration, at senior level, rather than on truth and justice. Anway from my own experience, I have to admit that most of the police I encountered, were civil enough, but like every group of people, it had bad eggs, some very eggs. Out of the more than a dozen occassion of serious interroagtion, I was abused twice, once in London by Scottish personnel abd once In Occupied Ireland by native interrogators. I would say that generally from my own encounters with police in five juristictions, that they generally reflect society, as I have experienced it. I have one general rule, with regard to these situations, from my experience, and that is to never grass, tout, snitch on a friend. For this reason I have learned to choose my friends, very,very, carefully. I would also qualify that, by saying, that being a smart ass in interrogation, is not prudent, unless you are a masochist. The last thing you need, is a cop with a boner for you and yes, they do have a very long arm. Like Mairead Farrell said in her interview, in these situations, our head is our best weapon.

Stop Kidding Yourself: The Police Were Created to Control Working Class and Poor People

By Sam Mitrani

December 31, 2014 "ICH" - "LAWCHA" - - In most of the liberal discussions of the recent police killings of unarmed black men, there is an underlying assumption that the police are supposed to protect and serve the population. That is, after all, what they were created to do. If only the normal, decent relations between the police and the community could be re-established, this problem could be resolved. Poor people in general are more likely to be the victims of crime than anyone else, this reasoning goes, and in that way, they are in more need than anyone else of police protection. Maybe there are a few bad apples, but if only the police weren’t so racist, or didn’t carry out policies like stop-and-frisk, or weren’t so afraid of black people, or shot fewer unarmed men, they could function as a useful service that we all need.

This liberal way of viewing the problem rests on a misunderstanding of the origins of the police and what they were created to do. The police were not created to protect and serve the population. They were not created to stop crime, at least not as most people understand it. And they were certainly not created to promote justice. They were created to protect the new form of wage-labor capitalism that emerged in the mid to late nineteenth century from the threat posed by that system’s offspring, the working class.

This is a blunt way of stating a nuanced truth, but sometimes nuance just serves to obfuscate.




Slave patrol badge, 1858. Slave patrols to hunt down escaped slaves were the original police in the South.

Before the nineteenth century, there were no police forces that we would recognize as such anywhere in the world. In the Northern United States, there was a system of elected constables and sheriffs, much more responsible to the population in a very direct way than the police are today. In the South, the closest thing to a police force was the slave patrols. Then, as Northern cities grew and filled with mostly immigrant wage workers who were physically and socially separated from the ruling class, the wealthy elite who ran the various municipal governments hired hundreds and then thousands of armed men to impose order on the new working class neighborhoods.

Class conflict roiled late nineteenth century American cities like Chicago, which experienced major strikes and riots in 1867, 1877, 1886, and 1894. In each of these upheavals, the police attacked strikers with extreme violence, even if in 1877 and 1894 the U.S. Army played a bigger role in ultimately repressing the working class. In the aftermath of these movements, the police increasingly presented themselves as a thin blue line protecting civilization, by which they meant bourgeois civilization, from the disorder of the working class. This ideology of order that developed in the late nineteenth century echoes down to today – except that today, poor black and Latino people are the main threat, rather than immigrant workers.




Chicago police cast themselves as the defenders of civilization for a society ordered by capitalist premises. After Haymarket in 1886, they contended that they stood between civilization and anarchy.

Of course, the ruling class did not get everything it wanted, and had to yield on many points to the immigrant workers it sought to control. This is why, for instance, municipal governments backed away from trying to stop Sunday drinking, and why they hired so many immigrant police officers, especially the Irish. But despite these concessions, businessmen organized themselves to make sure the police were increasingly isolated from democratic control, and established their own hierarchies, systems of governance, and rules of behavior. The police increasingly set themselves off from the population by donning uniforms, establishing their own rules for hiring, promotion, and firing, working to build a unique esprit des corps, and identifying themselves with order. And despite complaints about corruption and inefficiency, they gained more and more support from the ruling class, to the extent that in Chicago, for instance, businessmen donated money to buy the police rifles, artillery, Gatling guns, buildings, and money to establish a police pension out of their own pockets.

There was a never a time when the big city police neutrally enforced “the law,” or came anywhere close to that ideal (for that matter, the law itself has never been neutral). In the North, they mostly arrested people for the vaguely defined “crimes” of disorderly conduct and vagrancy throughout the nineteenth century. This meant that the police could arrest anyone they saw as a threat to “order.” In the post-bellum South, they enforced white supremacy and largely arrested black people on trumped-up charges in order to feed them into convict labor systems.

The violence the police carried out and their moral separation from those they patrolled were not the consequences of the brutality of individual officers, but were the consequences of careful policies designed to mold the police into a force that could use violence to deal with the social problems that accompanied the development of a wage-labor economy. For instance, in the short, sharp depression of the mid 1880s, Chicago was filled with prostitutes who worked the streets. Many policemen recognized that these prostitutes were generally impoverished women seeking a way to survive, and initially tolerated their behavior. But the police hierarchy insisted that the patrolmen do their duty whatever their feelings, and arrest these women, impose fines, and drive them off the streets and into brothels, where they could be ignored by some members of the elite and controlled by others. Similarly, in 1885, when Chicago began to experience a wave of strikes, some policemen sympathized with strikers. But once the police hierarchy and the mayor decided to break the strikes, policemen who refused to comply were fired. In these and a thousand similar ways, the police were molded into a force that would impose order on working class and poor people, whatever the individual feelings of the officers involved.

Though some patrolmen tried to be kind and others were openly brutal, police violence in the 1880s was not a case of a few bad apples – and neither is it today.




Graffiti, location unknown.

Much has changed since the creation of the police – most importantly the influx of black people into the Northern cities, the mid-twentieth century black movement, and the creation of the current system of mass incarceration in part as a response to that movement. But these changes did not lead to a fundamental shift in policing. They led to new policies designed to preserve fundamental continuities. The police were created to use violence to reconcile electoral democracy with industrial capitalism. Today, they are just one part of the “criminal justice” system which continues to play the same role. Their basic job is to enforce order among those with the most reason to resent the system – who in our society today are disproportionately poor black people.

A democratic police system is imaginable – one in which police are elected by and accountable to the people they patrol. But that is not what we have. And it’s not what the current system of policing was created to be.




Sam Mitrani, The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894, available from University of Illinois Press

If there is one positive lesson from the history of policing’s origins, it is that when workers organized, refused to submit or cooperate, and caused problems for the city governments, they could back the police off from the most galling of their activities. Murdering individual police officers, as happened in in Chicago on May 3rd 1886 and more recently in New York on December 20th, 2014, only reinforced those calling for harsh repression – a reaction we are beginning to see already. But resistance on a mass scale could force the police to hesitate. This happened in Chicago during the early 1880s, when the police pulled back from breaking strikes, hired immigrant officers, and tried to re-establish some credibility among the working class after their role in brutally crushing the 1877 upheaval.

The police might be backed off again if the reaction against the killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and countless others continues. If they are, it will be a victory for those mobilizing today, and will save lives – though as long as this system that requires police violence to control a big share of its population survives, any change in police policy will be aimed at keeping the poor in line more effectively.

We shouldn’t expect the police to be something they’re not. As historians, we ought to know that origins matter, and the police were created by the ruling class to control working class and poor people, not help them. They’ve continued to play that role ever since.

Sam Mitrani is an Associate Professor of History at the College of DuPage. He earned his PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2009 and his book The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894 is available from the University of Illinois Press.

SCOTLAND'S Working Class Heroes

 

Can ye no hush your weepin'
all the wee lambs are sleepin'
Birdies are nestlin' nestlin' together 
Dream Angus is hirplin' oer the heather
Dreams to sell, fine dreams to sell 
Angus is here wi' dreams to sell
Hush ye my baby and sleep without fear
Dream Angus has brought you a dream my dear.
List' to the curlew cryin'
Faintly the echos dyin' 
Even the birdies and the beasties are sleepin'
But my bonny bairn is weepin' weepin' 
Dreams to sell, fine dreams to sell 
Angus is here wi' dreams to sell
Hush ye my baby and sleep without fear
Dream Angus has brought you a dream my dear

(Stephan Coyle)

James Connolly was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh of Irish parents in 1868. He was pioneer of the socialist and labour movement in Scotland before leaving for Ireland in 1896 where he took up a full time post with the Irish Socialist Republican Party, whose 100th anniversary is this year. This party sought to unite the twin strands of Irish Republicanism and Socialism into a single revolutionary force. Connolly later formed the Irish Citizen's Army during the Dublin lockout of 1913 to defend the dockworkers from the police and scabs. Connolly played a prominent part in the Rising and held the post of Commander in Chief of the Republican forces. He was badly wounded in the Rising and was executed by the British at Kilmainham Jail on May 12 whilst strapped to a chair.

Labour MP'S stood up and cheered in the House at the news of his death. The British left of the day condemned him for going to Ireland at all, including the Imperialist Social democrat leader Hyndman who believed in Socialism within the British Empire.

 

Charles Carrigan was born of Irish parents in the (then) industrial town of Denny, Stirlingshire in 1882. Modest by nature he possessed a keen intellect and worked as a tailor. From an early age he developed a love of all things Irish and was an enthusiastic Gaelic Leaguer.When Sinn Fein was founded in 1905, members of the IRB formed a branch in Glasgow soon afterwords, named the Eire Og Craobh. Charles Carrigan was it's first chairman. The branch was very active and organised Gaelic classes as well as holding lectures on Irish history and the contemporary political situation. Carrigan's wide reading knowledge of their hardships endured by the working classes of Clydeside, many of whom were Irish immigrants, developed in him a strong social conscience. In 1906 the future Minister of Housing in the First Labour Government, John Weatley, founded the small but influential Catholic Socialist Society. It aimed to reconcile practising Roman Catholics with the tents of socialism. Carrigan and fellow IRB member, Thomas O'Baun enrolled. As well as serving on the organising committee and presiding at meetings, Carrigan was much in demand as a lecturer. It was hardly surprising then, that when Arthur Griffith sided with the management during the Dublin Lock Out, the Glasgow Sinn Feiners felt compelled to denounce his actions.

Carrigan and other prominent IRB members left for Ireland in order to evade conscription which was introduced in January 1916. When there they made preparations for the impending Rising. During the fighting Carrigan was positioned at the GPO with other members of the Scottish Division. Despite putting up a brave fight, the constant British bombardment was taking it's toll. Incendiary shells set the Republican Headquarters on fire and their evacuation became necessary. It was during the second evacuation on the 28th that Charles Carrigan was cut down by a hail of bullets with the O'Rahilly by his side. They were killed in Moore Street near the burning GPO. Bya sad coincidence it was Carrigan's 34th birthday. Charles Carrigan's name takes pride of place on a monument in St. Paul's Cemetery, Glasnevin, beneath which he is buried along with 15 other heroes of Easter Week.

Iain MacKenzie Kennedy was a Scottish Republican who is believed to have hailed from the Lochaber district on Inverness-shire. In 1916 he went to Ireland in a quest for the Irish language and later the West Cork Brigade of the IRA. He was killed by Free State forces at Passage West on August 8 1922. He and two Republican comrades put up an unequal fight against 64 Free Staters, killing 12, and wounding 15. The following is an extract from his obituary which appeared in the 'Fenian'.

"We well remember Iain MacKenzie Kennedy in Killarney during the 'trouble', but before it had reached its Black and Tan zenith. A fine strapping handsome boy, he was attired always in a kilt and the tartan of his clan. He was fiercely anti-English. He had thrown away much in Scotland and came to Ireland accompanied by his very charming mother rather than fight for the English. He went about quite openly although the town was full of British military. One day two swaggering officers armed fully, passed him in the street and made some sneering remark about his cowardice in not "joining up". He reached out and grabbed one in either hand, banged their two heads together, and threw the dazed up the street. He was intensely Gaelic and clan proud". Iain MacKenzie Kennedy is buried in the Republican plot in Cork City and his name takes prided of place on the Republican Monument in Macroom.

The Irish in Scotland It is right and proper that we the faithful Republicans of Glasgow recall the significant contribution that was made by the contingent of Glasgow Republicans who travelled to Dublin to play a full part in that epoch making event. The highest ranks of the Irish Republican Brotherhood were informed on January 1916 that the Rising was planned. This resulted in an upsurge in explosive gathering raids and smuggling operations on the part of that organisation. The Finna also transported large amounts of explosives, detonators fuse wire and other materials useful in bombmaking. After being stored in safe houses in Scotland the material would be taken by young Finna boys to Ireland. The route most commonly used was that between Ardrossan and Belfast. Some of the smuggled explosives which mainly came from Lanarkshire coalfields, would be distributed amongst sympathisers in Belfast, but the bulk would be transported to Dublin.

Not alone did Scotland provide some of the arms used in the Easter Rising, but some of the participants. Immediately the discussion to stage a Rising was known to the IRB in Scotland, those who possessed specialist knowledge of explosives left for Ireland. They joined up with some of their comrades, who were stationed in a camp at the Kimmage home of Count Plunkett and were known as the Scottish Division of the Kimmage Garrison. Their task along with Republican contingents from London and Liverpool, was to prepare the armoury for the Rising. The majority of Irish Volunteers in Scotland were only informed of the plans for the Rising about a week in advance. About 50 Irish Volunteers from Glasgow took part in the event and were joined by an enthusiastic band of women from Cumann nam Bann. The latter did sterling work in nursing the Republican casualties during the subsequent fighting. Many of them were schoolteachers who had learned how to shoot in a Glasgow rifle range. The first military action of the overseas contigents occurred before the Rising itself when they successfully fought off a would be police raiding party, killing a squad detective. Most of the Scotish Division were deployed in garrisons on the perimeter of the GPO and elsewhere.

Six of the men who had come from 'a land beyond the sea' never returned. Glasgow Cumann nam Bann and Citizen Army member Margaret Skinneder, was badly wounded on the Wednesday, whilst taking part in a house situated behind the Russell Hotel on the Green. It was thougt to be occupied, by the British, who had to dislodged before more aggressive action could be taken, but a sniper in the house opposite opened fire killing 17 year old Fred Ryan and hitting Margaret Skinneder three times.Fortunately she made a full recovery and wrote her book, 'Doing my bit for Ireland', which was published the following year. Following the military failure of the Rising the one hundred or so members of the British contingents, together with two thousand other internees and deportees, many of whom had been totally uninvolved in the Rising, were conveyed in cattle boats to Britain. Members of the Scottish Division, including it's leader Joesph Robinson, were dispersed in such prisons as Reading jail, Balinnie and Perth, before being interned together in Frongoch Camp in North Wales. This place was to become in effect the 'University of Irish Republicanism'.With the release of the Republican prisoners in December, 1916 the IRB in Glasgow was able to regroup and resume its previous activities of raiding for arms and transporting the material to Ireland.

A scottish Brigade of Oglaigh Nah Eireann was established in early 1919 out of the Irish Volunteers and by the High Water mark of the Anglo-Irish War in 1921, it could boast a membership of 2,500 with 33 affiliated companies across Scotland. Everywher there was a significant Irish presence, a branch of the Sinn Fein existed. The largest one was in Greenock with a membership of 1000, with 600 each for Paisley and Dumbarton. Clearly the Irish in Scotland were very staunch and according to one Prominent Republican. source, the support from Scotland in terms of munitions and financial aid during the Tan War outstripped that of any other country including the USA.

- See more at: http://www.scottishrepublicansocialistmovement.org/Pages/SRSMArticlesRepublicanRollofHonourforScotland.aspx#sthash.6caI4HDi.dpuf

Irish Republican News

Irish Republican News

>>>>>> Trouble breaks out ahead of historic handshake



 Rioting erupted in west Belfast last night ahead of an unprecedented
 meeting later today [Wednesday] between Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness
 and British monarch Elizabeth Windsor.

 A crowd of more than 100 youths clashed with the PSNI at a shopping
 centre near the Falls Road and Broadway roundabout in west Belfast.
 Missiles, including petrol and paint bombs, were thrown at PSNI riot
 squads and their armoured vehicles.  No injuries were reported.

 Tensions had escalated all day following protests against the planned
 meeting between McGuinness, a former IRA commander, and Windsor, the
 commander-in-chief of the British Armed Forces.

 McGuinness, the North's Deputy First Minister, has resisted appeals to
 call off his meeting, including a number from prominent Sinn Fein
 supporters. He said the meeting between two would mark another historic
 breakthrough for the peace process.

 OPPOSITION WRIT LARGE

 On Tuesday morning, nationalist protestors laid out a giant sign on the
 side of Black mountain outside Belfast against the planned handshake.
 Accompanied by a giant Irish tricolour flag, the sign read: 'Eriu is our
 queen', referring to the legendary goddess-queen of Ireland, Eriu, from
 which the island draws its name.

 With each letter thirty feet in length, and the flag covering almost
 one-sixth of an acre, the huge mountainside message made international
 headlines.  But just hours later, five men who were involved in the
 protest were set upon by a mob of over a hundred loyalists, many
 wielding clubs and hammers.  The resulting clashes left three of the men
 badly injured, and the sign was destroyed.

 Community activist SeanCahill said one of the victims was sleeping in a
 tent when he was attacked. "He was drenched in blood. It was just a
 frenzied attack," he said.  The man, from the Springhill area of
 Belfast, was hospitalised with a serious head injury.

 Organisers of the protest described it as an "art project" and "a
 celebration of our heritage and culture" which had been supported and
 funded by the working-class communities of west Belfast.

 "It is the culture of a Gaelic people... who give no allegiance to any
 foreign head of state."

 Following the loyalist attack, which they said was "purely sectarian",
 they appealed for support. "While others are shaking hands with a
 foreign invader, true republicans have been beaten with hatchets, knives
 and left hospitalised. What happened to the Ireland of equals that we
 were promised?"

 Community artist Gerard Kelly, who worked on the project with residents
 and children from Springhlll in the upper Springfield area, said
 thepiece was "just an expression of who we are".

 "The community wanted to do something to express our point of view,
 that Eriu is our queen," he said. "I respect everybody's right to
 believe in what they believe and I hope they respect my right to believe
 what I believe and what my community believe."

 Local unionist MP Nigel Dodds said the protest was "offensive" and "a
 futile gesture highlighting nothing other than their own failure".

 REACTION

 Today's planned encounter has sharply polarised the nationalist
 community in the north of Ireland. While the Sinn Fein leadership has
 backed what they argue is a historic peace move, a number of prominent
 nationalists and republicans have protested against what they say is an
 orchestrated humiliation for nationalists.

 eirigi's Breandan Mac Cionnaith said he was not surprised by the move.
 He said Sinn Fein was only "paying lip-service" to demands by families
 of British state violence for justice and truth while acting "as a prop"
 for maintaining British injustice.

 "The Sinn Fein leadership previously took the strategic decision to
 gradually and consciously move that party away from its former role as a
 vanguard of the anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland," he said.

 "One calculated outworking of that strategic decision in domestic terms
 has been the unprecedented acceptance and copper-fastening of partition
 by that party, and its consent to continuing British government control
 over part of Ireland, to such an extent that the party is now a willing
 and integral participant in operating the mechanics of partition and
 injustice."

 A man wounded in the British Army's Bloody Sunday massacre said he's
 "disgusted" that "so-called Irish republicans" will meet the British
 monarch.

 Speaking at a march and rally in Belfast at the weekend, Mr Donaghy -
 the first person to be shot on Bloody Sunday - said it should never be
 forgotten that, 40 years ago, Windsor "decorated the Parachute Regiment
 with medals of honour for their part in the murder and attempted murder
 of innocent people on the streets of Derry".

 He added: "The Queen's Jubilee and future engagements in Ireland should
 be treated with disdain."

 The march was also attended by Linda Roddy, whose brother was among
 those murdered on Bloody Sunday.

 She told marchers: "Does Martin forget that the queen decorated the
 Parachute Regiment and that they remain decorated? Does he forget the
 role of the queen's forces in Derry and the murder of innocent civilians
 and children such as Manus Deery, Annette McGavigan and many more?

 "I hope you are happy with your new-found friends, Martin, for they are
 the employers of the men who murdered our loved ones."

 Fra McCaughey, the sister of Sam Marshall, who was murdered by a
 pro-British death squad in Lurgan in March 1990, said that "unless the
 British queen is going to announce next week that she will instruct her
 government and her forces to open up their secret files and set the
 truth free, then I and my family see nothing to celebrate."

 SOUTH ARMAGH

 A commemoration in south Armagh heard even stronger denunciations of
 McGuinness. Provisional IRA founder Laurence O'Neill described his as "a
 Judas" and "a traitor".  He said that Mr McGuinness was "shaking the paw
 of the queen of England as a guarantee that will see her dream come true
 of Ireland remaining a cosy, peaceful colony".

 Around 500 people attended the commemorative rally for local IRA
 Volunteer Sean O'Callaghan on Sunday including leading Lurgan republican
 Colin Duffy, former Sinn Fein Assembly member Davy Hyland, and Breandan
 MacCionnaith of eirigi. Former IRA hunger-strikers Tommy McKearney and
 Gerard Hodgins were also present.

 Mr O'Neill said republican grassroots had been "conned, betrayed, sold
 down the river and told 'not a bullet, not an ounce'".

 "Shame on those who sold us out. We were told the lie that the war was
 at a stalemate -- yet the IRA had 20 tons of weaponry in bunkers all over
 Ireland."

 The rally was also addressed by former Sinn Fein Assembly member Pat
 McNamee and former party representative Jim McAllister.

 Mr McNamee said: "Don't tell us that securing the current political
 arrangements in the North was what the republican struggle was about.
 Don't tell us that a better partition is what people suffered and died
 for.

 "Sean O'Callaghan gave the best years of his life for an independent
 32-county republic. He wouldn't be attending the garden party or any
 other Royal meeting this week."

 UNIONIST REACTION

 Many British and unionist political figures have also argued that the
 handshake amounts to an acknowledgement of British rule.

 Norman Tebbit, a leading Tory and a former cabinet colleague of Margaret
 Thatcher, claimed the move was an acceptance by the former Provisional
 IRA commander of the failure of its campaign.

 "I am glad that Mr McGuinness appears to have now accepted on behalf of
 IRA/Sinn Fein the sovereignty of Her Majesty over Northern Ireland, and
 I hope that this is a step towards a public recompense and confession",
 he said.

 Bethan Jenkins of the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru party described
 McGuinness as "naive" for going ahead with the meeting, while the
 right-wing Daily Telegraph claimed that McGuinness had been successfully
 "decommissioned" by the British establishment.

 "Other than moving into Buckingham Palace and curling up like an old
 green corgi at the foot of the queen's bed, I'm not sure how much more
 Sinn Fein could do to indicate that their war has been lost and the
 surrender terms penned by the British," said unionist commentator Alex
 Kane.

 The DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson said the handshake was necessary if Sinn
 Fein man wanted to continue to share power at Stormont. "If Martin
 McGuinness is to be the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, he
 needs to recognize that her majesty is head of state of the United
 Kingdom," he said.

 McGUINNESS DEFIANT

 Depsite the exceptional wave of hostility and disdain against him, Mr
 McGuinness defended his decison to meet the queen.  He said it would be
 an opportunity "to propel the peace process forward to a new
 unprecedented level".

 Only a "tiny number" of people had disagreed with the move, he said.

 "This is me stepping up to the plate, this is me moving forward to be
 involved in an event which I hope sends a very clear signal to people
 about the importance of reconciliation, and the importance of us working
 together to ensure that the disasters of the past are not visited on the
 children of the future," he said.

 He said it was important for him to extend the hand of peace and
 reconciliation.

 "I've shaken the hands of many unionists over the course of this peace
 process, but it's obviously physically impossible to shake the hands of
 every one of those hundreds of thousands.

 "So symbolically, when shaking the hand of Queen Elizabeth, I'm
 extending the hand of peace and reconciliation to all my unionist
 brothers and sisters."

 He said he would face a challenge on Wednesday, "but it's a challenge I
 will rise to."

 Mr McGuinness said massive strides had been made during the peace
 process.

 "The unthinkable in the past has come to pass, so other things that may
 be unthinkable now I believe will come to pass in the future," he said.
 "But the next phase of this has to be a phase of reconciliation."

 He resisted pressure to limit the fallout from the meeting by asking
 Buckingham Palace not to release photographs of the event. An official
 royal photographer is expected to be present to capture the handshake.
 McGuinness said that it would be "cowardly" if the moment he shook
 Windsor's hand was not captured on camera.

 "Once I decide to do something I don't hide behind doors, I don't seek
 secrecy for anything I do. I and the people I represent have the
 confidence to step out front and be upfront about our actions and how we
 believe those actions can contribute to making the place we live in a
 far, far better place than it is at the moment," he said.

 Mr McGuinness indicated that he considered Windsor and her husband to be
 among those who are victims of the conflict -- Louis Mountbatten, an
 uncle of Windsor's husband, died in an IRA attack on his boat off the
 Irish coast in 1979.

 "I represent people who have been terribly hurt by British state
 violence over many years. I also recognise I am going to meet someone
 who has also been hurt as a result of the conflict, and someone who is
 very conscious that in many homes in Britain there are parents, wives,
 children, brothers and sisters of British soldiers who were sent here
 who lost their lives in the conflict."

 He still had not decided how he would address Windsor, but that it was
 unlikely to be "Your majesty".

 "These are not the sort of terms I use when I speak to people," he said.

 Mr McGuinness also rejected those who say his decision to meet Windsor
 effectively recognised her as head of state.

 "I am not a royalist. I am not a monarchist, I am an Irish republican...
 the person I recognise as the head of state is President Higgins," he
 said.

 He hoped the meeting would symbolically demonstrate to unionists that
 they were valued and respected and to give them a "glimpse of what a
 reunited Ireland would look like".