Looking Back at 2024 - Some Of The Interviews I Gave & the Speeches I Made

 For those who don’t like to compare Israel & Nazi Germany my message is ‘Compare, Compare, Compare’ – At A Time Of Extermination it's Important to Understand Just What Kind of State Israel Is

Demonstration Outside Westminster Magistrates Court

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv2lxMBpW-0&t=235s

Crispin Flintoff & Tony Greenstein Outside Westminster Magistrates Court

2024 has been a very busy year for me and below are some of the things that I did.  I had a tour of Scotland and speaking engagements in Ireland and the Netherlands as well as speaking at demonstrations in Glasgow, Liverpool and my home town Brighton.

I continued to promote my book which came out at the end of 2022. Quite remarkably sales were higher by far in the first half of 2024 than in the first half of 2023. You don’t get to learn of the sales figures until about 3 months after the end of the half year but I expect they will have increased again.

I did a wide range of interviews and talks, only some of which are below with audiences in the United States, South Africa and Australia. The theme of my book can be summed up in that Jewish Chronicle headline ‘Infamous anti-Israel activist Tony Greenstein called Jewish state 'Hitler's bastard offspring’. Israel has demonstrated that the only thing it learnt from Nazi Germany was how to emulate them.

On 21^st December Katie Halper and I finally managed to arrange an interview. Katie was a stand-up comedian before taking to podcasts and political commentary. She runs her own Katie Halper Show and is co-host of the podcast Useful Idiots with Aaron Maté.

Katie was a very challenging interviewer and I was pleased with the outcome. Recorded separately were interviews with Jenny Manson, the co-chair of Jewish Voices for Labour and Rabbi Herschel Gluck.

On November 7 I was invited to Cork in Ireland to speak. The atmosphere in Ireland is totally different from that in Britain where the State is breathing down our necks and harassing our marches. Ireland doesn’t have a genocidal supporting government supplying Israel with more weaponry to murder civilians and destroy hospitals.

I spoke in a hotel on the evening of the November 7 and the room was packed and I nearly sold out of books. At the end of the meeting I was taken aback when I was given a standing ovation. It shows the enthusiasm and solidarity of the Irish with the Palestinians.

On the Friday night I spoke at a bar in a small town in West Cork, Skibbereen. I’d never heard of the place before but again the room was packed to the rafters. The following day I took part in a march in the town and afterwards spoke at the rally.

This was in the middle of the Irish General Election. There were sarcastic comments about the Social Democrats taking part in the march having never done previously! The experience of British colonialism has ensured that the Irish understand what is happening and it is no surprise that Israel has closed its Embassy in Ireland.

My relationship with Electronic Intifada has been for over 15 years. It has been a very productive and comradely one. EI first asked me to write an article Histadrut: Israel's racist "trade union" in March 2009. I have since written a number of articles. Their podcast How Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, in conversation with Tony Greenstein has gained over 320K views and is one of their most highly viewed. Asa Winstanley also reviewed my book under the title How Zionism helped the Nazis perpetrate the Holocaust.

Asa himself has recently written the most comprehensive account of anyone of the anti-Semitism smear campaign under Jeremy Corbyn, Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn.

I was therefore pleased to be invited to an interview with EI on my birthday, 30 December! It was a very useful and productive interview. Electronic Intifada is the premiere Palestine Solidarity website. Having written for many papers, journals and sites I have to say that no one gives you such a hard time as EI! They check virtually every word and quote to see that you can back it up.  Nothing escapes the scrutiny of their fact checkers. Would that the British tabloids or Elon Musk had to undergo the same level of scrutiny!

Another interview, in fact two interviews was with Rania Khalek, a young Lebanese woman who runs Breakthrough News. Rania is a feisty interviewer who clearly feels the pain of what has happened in Lebanon with Israel’s savage bombing of its civilian population.

Rania first interviewed me in Budapest on 10 April, where I had gone for dental implant surgery.  However the Internet connection was not good and my computer had problems so we completed the interview on 15 April back in Brighton. This is the full interview and this is the cut down version.

 

On 14 June Rania interviewed me about my book and this time it was completed in one session. I found it a fascinating interview and thanks to Rania for the time she took over this. Subsequently Rania was invited to speak at a meeting of the Socialist Labour Network and Jewish Network for Palestine on a Jewish or a Democratic State and on January 27 she will speak at our Holocaust Memorial Day meeting. You can go here for the full length interview.

I have never been attracted to the idea of an autobiography or even a biography. Life is too short to waste time describing what you have done with your life and its bound to be partial and self-exculpatory. However I was happy to work with Helen Aksentijevic to produce a short, half hour film summarising some of the things I’ve tried to do.

Helen has produced similar films on other Jewish anti-Zionist  such as Moshe Machover, Haim Bresheeth and Sabby Sagall so I was very flattered to be asked.

Tony Greenstein - An Ordinary Rebel plus Question & Answer Session at the P21

At the end of October I was invited to the wedding of an old friend, a long standing Palestine solidarity activist, Susan  Blackwell.  She lives in the Netherlands and so I said that I would be happy to do a meeting whilst there.

Sue got in touch with students at the main technical university in the Netherlands, Delft University, and I was invited to speak to a meeting. The only problem was that the university, which was happy to invite Admiral Ellis, a representative of US arms company Lockheed Martin to campus and a ghoul of many US wars, they didn’t want me to speak because I might hurt the feelings of those students who supported the genocide in Gaza.

Of course when you contrast the hurt feelings of Zionists with the dead bodies of Palestinian children there is no contest.  So I wrote to the Rector His Magnificus (yes that’s his title) Timothy van der Hagen suggesting that freedom of speech is worth preserving. After all Hagen had written on the university website that

‘The most important task of TU Delft is to make a contribution towards building a better society’.

Yet Magnificus Hagen’s idea of a better society and mine were not the same. Hagen is just another ruling class hypocrite.

However the students had other ideas. Although I was banned from campus I turned up anyway and with just 2 hours notice over 100 students gathered to listen to me on the steps of the library. Not only had the stupid Magnificus built my meeting for me but by his own actions he had ensured that my message went out to thousands.

The Rector of Delft University - the Magnificus Timothy van der Hagen

The security, although watching, did not intervene.  A magnificus victory! I did write to Magnificus Hagen afterwards but he seems to be a man of few words and even fewer thoughts!

Tony Greenstein's Speech at Delft University Which the Administration Tried to Ban

As readers of this blog will know I was arrested a year ago on ‘terrorism’ charges and my last court appearance was on 19 December at Westminster magistrates court. There was a demonstration outside and I will be next appearing at the Old Bailey on 31 January where I hope people will also demonstrate their opposition to the use of terrorism legislation to silence Palestine solidarity activists.

Tony Greenstein's speech outside Westminster Magistrates Court

On the 4 August  I came back from my holiday in the Outer Hebrides and stopped off in Liverpool, where I spent my childhood, to speak to the Palestine demonstration outside the Roman Catholic Cathedral. I always enjoy going back to Liverpool with its magnificent waterfront and city buildings.

On 3 December I spoke on behalf of Jewish Network for Palestine at a seminar organised by the Open University Palestine group. Other speakers were Tony Lerman, an expert in anti-Semitism and former Director of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research, Barnaby Raine, a Ph D student and young firebrand and Michael Richmond who spoke about philosemitism, the other side of the anti-Semitism coin. The title was ‘How anti-Semitism has complemented Zionism’.

How antisemitism has complemented Zionism – Tony Greenstein

(for the full video go to here)

The JNP and SLN organised a seminar on the 12 November in the wake of my review of Jonathan Freedland’s dishonest biography of Rudolf Vrba, The Escape Artist, about the anti-Zionist Jewish hero who escaped, with Alfred Wetzler, from Auschwitz in order to warn Hungarian Jews of preparations being made to exterminate them.

Speakers included Stephen Kapos, a survivor of the Hungarian holocaust, Haim Bresheeth, an anti-Zionist Israeli and member of JNP and Tom Suarez, author Palestine Hijacked and State of Terror. Below is my contribution. A comprehensive website on Vrba has been set up by Alan Twigg, a journalist who knew him.

Zionism & the Holocaust – Tony Greenstein

The Complete Seminar – Rewriting the Holocaust

To commemorate the one year anniversary of October 7, the SLN and JNP organised a seminar to discuss the Gaza holocaust. Speakers included Ghada Karmi, a refugee from 1948, Rania Khalek, Haim Bresheeth and myself. Below is my speech but people can go to the SLN’s Youtube channel to listen to the complete seminar, ‘A Jewish State or a Democratic State’. Most most people agree that it was an extremely good seminar and I highly recommend listening to the whole seminar as I do the previous one on Vrba.

For One Democratic State

In the wake of Starmer’s election, the SLN organised a star studded panel including myself! Speakers included Ian Hodson, General Secretary of the Bakers Union,  Graham Bash – founding editor of National Labour Briefing, David Miller – who was sacked for his anti-Zionist views by Bristol University and who later won a landmark employment tribunal, Chris Williamson, the former Labour MP who was forced out of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and Crispin Flintoff, presenter of the Not the Andrew Marr show and latterly the Crispin Flintoff show which has a regular attendance of 500 every Sunday morning. You can hear the full video on the SLN Youtube channel here.

SLN Tony Greenstein – Where to for the Left 12 07 24

Every year for the past 2 years the SLN and the JNP have organised a meeting on Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27. As the Zionists weaponise the holocaust we have to be prepared to stand up and say ‘Never Again Means Never Again for Everyone’. For the Zionists of course, Never Again means never again only for Jews, or the right kind of Jew.

On January 27 2024 we had an excellent line up including Professor Ilan Pappe, Ghada Karmi, Ronnie Kasrills – the former head of Umkonte We Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing as well as former South African Police Minister , Stephen Kapos – a child holocaust survivor from Budapest, Suzanne Weiss – a child survivor from France and myself. Again a remarkable meeting. For the full meeting go here or here.

When Israel had been a month into the genocide in Gaza the JNP and SLN organised a webinar on the theme of stopping Israel’s onslaught. Speakers included Huda Ammori from Palestine Action, Asa Winstanley of Electronic Intifada, Stephen Kapos, Ronnie Barkan – an Israeli anti-Zionist activist and Tony Greenstein. You can watch the complete video here.

Stop the Genocide in Gaza 10.11.23

Last January I undertook a tour of Scotland at the invitation of Scottish PSC. I spoke in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. I also spoke at a large demonstration in Glasgow city centre.

Tony Greenstein speaking at Palestine Demonstration in Glasgow January 6 2024

Two months later I was back in Glasgow. It was March 16, UN Anti-Racism Day and the SWP’s  Stand Up to Racism were also holding a march. On the tiny SUTR march was none other than Glasgow Friends of Israel. Ever since 2017 the SWP/SUTR have insisted on marching with Zionists against racism! It’s like campaigning against rape alongside rapists.

This has been the subject of heated controversy in Scotland and the Police were always willing to lend a helping hand to ensure that the Zionists could march. This year, at a time of genocide in Palestine, the SWP’s decision to march with Zionists was particularly disgraceful.

Tony Greenstein speaking at the Anti-Racism Demonstration in Glasgow March 16 2024

On October 4^th, the 88^th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street, when the Police unsuccessfully tried to batter a way through the East End of London for the British Union of Fascists. The same Metropolitan Police arrested me after a picket of racist Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli for comparing Israel’s genocide in Gaza to the Nazi holocaust. Their pretext was that I had committed a ‘racially aggravated offence’ under the Public Order Act. After being held for 7 hours I was released from  Holborn Police Station. A few weeks later I was informed that I would not be charged with any offence.  This is the speech that so annoyed the Met!

Tony Greenstein Speech Which Led to his Arrrest at Picket of Tzipi Hotoveli 4 Oct 2024

At 8 a.m. on the 26 November 2024 I gave a talk to listeners in Australia about my book, Zionism During the Holocaust. It was 7 pm there!

In this interview with Crispin Flintoff I tried to explain why people believe I’m outspoken and what motivates me

Interview Tony Greenstein on the Crispin Flintoff Show - Why I'm Outspoken

On 23 November 2023 I spoke to a meeting of the Labour Left Alliance in the wake of October 7. There was then an extensive Question & Answer session.

LLA meeting 23 November 2023

On 15 November I spoke at a demonstration organised by the Trades Council outside Hove Town Hall

And finally the one time I appeared on Question Time at Sussex University’s Gardener Centre. It was when Norman Tebbit, the Chingford skinhead was on the panel. I spoke from the audience attacking him for his racist cricket test directed against immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. Also on the panel was Clare Short. Peter Sissons was in the Chair. I don’t think I would have got away with it with today’s far-right Fiona Bruce!

Tony Greenstein on Question Time

39 years ago Bobby Sands, the Member of Parliament for Fermanagh & South Tyrone, died on hunger strike

The Stupidity of Thatcher and the British Government in Refusing Political Status for Republican Prisoners led to the growth of Sinn Fein North and South

Bobby Sands wasn’t the first Irish hunger striker nor was he the last to die. Terence MacSwiney, the elected Sinn Fein Mayor of Cork, died in Brixton prison in October 1920 after 74 days on hunger strike. He had been arrested by the British government on a charge of sedition, a clearly political ‘crime’. 10 hunger strikers died in 1981.

Roy Mason, Labour's Northern Ireland Secretary, behaved like a typical British Colonial Secretary 

Their demands were for the  return of political status which had been removed on March 1 1976 by Merlyn Rees, Labour’s Northern Ireland Minister. He was succeeded by the hated Roy Mason who was worse than any Tory imperialist ruler.

At first the reaction to the removal of political status was the blanket and dirty protest where faeces were spread on the walls.  Eventually that led to the hunger strikes. The behaviour of Roy Mason in provoking what became the hunger strikes led to the defeat of the Labour government when Frank MacGuire, the Independent Republican MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone abstained in person.

The refusal to wear clothes preceded the hunger strike

Of course there are racists and imperialist dupes who chime up that the IRA were ‘men of violence’ and ‘terrorists’. The same people have no problem in supporting the ‘men of violence’ when it comes to the invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, Israel’s war against the Palestinian people and any other imperial adventures. But when people fight back against colonialism and imperialism it is terrorism.  The same is true in Palestine.  The only ‘terrorists’ are the Palestinians, never the Israeli state.

The 10 Hunger Strikers Who Died

During the 16^th and 17^th centuries Ireland and in particular Ulster was subject to the Plantation, the colonisation of Ireland by thousands of settlers from Britain, Scotland in particular. This was enabled through the confiscation, i.e. theft of land from the indigenous population. This Protestant population was then used as a foil by the British state in order to undermine and subvert Irish unity.

The same happened in Palestine with the settlement of Jews from Europe and it is what the Indian government today is intending to do in Kashmir.

Bobby Sands funeral cortege accompanied by 6 IRA men

I was a member of the Troops Out Movement and I arrived on a fact finding/solidarity tour on 8^th August 1981 as the 9^th hunger striker, Thomas McElwee died.  I’ll never forget the scene on the Falls Road, the main road through the Catholic ghetto of West Belfast, with hundreds of women banging dustbin lids on the road to announce the death.

Here was a working class community basically in insurrection. I had never seen anything like this and wasn’t to see anything like it until I stayed during the miners’ strike in the South Yorkshire village of Armthorpe in December 1984.  Armthorpe had been subject to a siege by the corrupt and murderous South Yorkshire Police.

Although he died, it was Bobby Sands who won out against Thatcher

The British strategy in Northern Ireland was criminalisation. According to this fiction the IRA and INLA were merely common criminals like any bank robber. This has always been the reaction of the British to colonial uprisings. Whether it was the Indian Mutiny or the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya the only reason that people rebelled against British rule was for base criminal reasons. There was nothing political about it. This was the self-deception that the British comforted themselves with. It was an illusion and a lie.

The 5 Demands

The fact is that the Catholic population of Northern Ireland had never accepted the constitutional set up.  In 1918 Sinn Fein won the all-Ireland general election winning 73 out of 105 seats. The Liberal government under Asquith refused to implement the Home Rule Act of 1914 as a consequence of the Curragh Mutiny by army officers in 1914.

There was a civil war in the Free State in Southern Ireland between 1918 and 1920. The British had threatened war and destruction unless the Irish accepted Partition. Partition, the favourite solution of imperialism to its divide and rule tactics in settler colonies, was imposed on the Irish people. The nationalist population of the north of Ireland had never accepted Partition and the IRA was the consequence.

Some of the thousands of mourners at Bobby Sands funeral

Partition has had disastrous consequences wherever it has been imposed in the world, be it Cyprus or India or indeed Palestine. As James Connolly predicted, Partition

would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish Labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements whilst it endured.

The Northern Ireland police statelet was created in 1921 and until 1969 there was what was called a Protestant state for a Protestant people with gerrymandering widespread. For example in Derry, there was a perpetual Unionist council even though Catholics formed the majority of the population by the simple device of making Catholic wards larger.

There grew up a civil rights movement in northern Ireland. In 1967 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was formed. It was a completely peaceful movement but it was met with state and unionist violence.

On 4 January 1969 a People's Democracy march from Belfast to Derry was violently attacked at Burntollet Bridge. This was the beginning of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The march had been called in defiance of an appeal by Northern Ireland Prime Minister Terence O'Neill for an end to protest. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and some Derry nationalists had advised against it. Supporters of Ian Paisley, led by Major Ronald Bunting , denounced the march and mounted counter-demonstrations along the route.

At Burntollet an Ulster loyalist crowd numbering in the region of 300, including 100 off-duty members of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC), attacked the civil rights marchers with stones as well as iron bars and sticks spiked with nails. Nearby members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) did nothing to prevent the violence.

In the Battle of the Bogside, from 12-14 August the B-Specials, an all-Protestant paramilitary force and Unionists tried to invade what became Free Derry. It was repelled by a civil insurrection and barricades were thrown up. It was a colonial rebellion by the Catholics of the north. It was euphemistically called ‘The Troubles’.

At that time there was no IRA.  The IRA was reformed and split into the Officials ‘stickies’ and Provisionals.  The former claimed to be Marxist but ended up as the right-wing Workers Party in Southern Ireland. In 1969 the IRA stood for ‘I Ran Away’.

In 1981 the Hunger Strike began on March 1^st with Bobby Sands, the officer commanding the IRA in Long Kesh refusing his breakfast. On March 5^th the sitting nationalist MP Frank MacGuire died.  Bobby Sands was nominated in the by-election that followed and he defeated the sole Unionist candidate, Harry West by some 1,400 votes. Sands never took his seat.  He died 26 days later.

This was the context in which the hunger strikes took place and the sacrifice of Bobby Sands and the other 9 men.  Eventually the relatives of the hunger strikers insisted that the strike was called off but the demands were effectively won by then. In any event the British government had lost politically and northern Ireland would never be the same again.

The hunger strike led to the rise of Sinn Fein and in 1983 Gerry Adams was elected as the MP for West Belfast defeating the sitting MP, Gerry ‘the Brit’ Fitt. The continual accusation by supporters of Britain’s occupation was that the IRA didn’t have the support of the Catholic population. The election of Bobby Sands by the voters of Fermanagh and South Tyrone and then the victory of Gerry Adams proved once and for all that the IRA had the passive, if not active, support of the working class Catholic population of Northern Ireland.

In the succeeding years the right-wing Social Democratic and Labour Party, the ‘moderate’ nationalist party, was eclipsed and Sinn Fein became the majority party of the Catholic population.

British colonialism has always been led by stupid and arrogant imperialists and none was more stupid than Thatcher who believed that her attempts to criminalise the Republican struggle would somehow stop the march of history.

With the Good Friday Agreement under Blair in 1998 the violence in Northern Ireland stopped, at least for the time being but as long as Ireland is partitioned, there will never be peace.

Below is an excellent article from Canary.

Tony Greenstein

We should never forget Bobby Sands, nor the brutality of the Thatcher government in Ireland

Peter Bolton
5th May 2020

Today marks the 39^th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands inside the H-blocks of Long Kesh internment camp. On 5 May 1981, Sands laid down his life for his and his comrades’ right for recognition as political prisoners. On this day, we should remember the sacrifice he made for the cause of Irish freedom. But his struggle does not just provide an example that all anti-imperialists should follow. It also serves as an important reminder of the ruthless brutality of the British government in Ireland under the leadership of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher. And that is equally something that we should never forget.

‘Criminalisation’ leads to ‘blanket protest’

On 1 March, 1976, the British government announced an end to ‘Special Category’ status for members of paramilitary organisations imprisoned for offences related to the conflict in Ireland. This formed part of a multi-pronged propaganda strategy to falsely portray the republican insurrection against British rule as some kind of aggravated crime wave.

In response, republican prisoners began a series of protests to regain the lost privileges, as well as the symbolic importance of prisoner of war status. This included the right to wear one’s own clothes, free association and exemption from prison work. IRA volunteer Kieran Nugent began the ‘blanket protest’ when he refused to wear a prison uniform. Thrown into his cell naked, he draped himself in the only thing available – a grey, prison-issue blanket.

The ‘dirty protest’ and the 1980 hunger strike

After suffering beatings from prison officers on their way to the shower areas, republican prisoners began the ‘no wash protest’, in which they refused to bathe, cut their hair or shave. When prison officers refused to empty their chamber pots, republican prisoners were forced to smear their own excrement on the walls, which marked the beginning of the ‘dirty protest’.

In 1979, their prospects became even bleaker with the election of the right-wing government of Margaret Thatcher in Britain. When it became clear that Thatcher wouldn’t grant even the most modest of concessions, republican prisoners began a hunger strike in 1980. It ended without any deaths when her government appeared to concede some of the strikers’ demands. But the document containing the terms of the agreement turned out to be vague and open to interpretation, and the prison regime was quickly returned to a situation little better than how it was before.

A second hunger strike, and this time to the death

Determined not to be double-crossed again, the new Officer Commanding (OC) of the republican prisoners, 27-year-old Bobby Sands, launched a second hunger strike with a crucial difference from the last. The strikers would stagger their joining of the fast one-by-one and two weeks apart so that each would near death one at a time. As OC, Sands volunteered to go first, making him the most likely to die. On 1 March, 1981, Sands refused his prison food, beginning the second hunger strike in Long Kesh just over two months after the end of the first.

On 5 March, less than a week into Sands’ fast, Frank Maguire, the independent nationalist member of parliament for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, died suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving his seat in Westminster vacant. The republican leadership on the outside hatched a plan. They were forever getting dismissed by political opponents for not having a mandate, but if they stood Sands as a candidate in the resultant by-election and won, they could demonstrate to the British government and the wider world that the hunger strikers’ demands had popular support in the community.

A bittersweet victory

On 9 April 1981, Bobby Sands won the election with over 30,000 votes – almost 10,000 more than Thatcher had won in her home constituency of Finchley in the 1979 UK general election. The victory provided the republican movement with a powerful morale boost and demolished the British government’s argument that they had no support.

But in spite of Sands’ victory, along with international pressure from the Irish diaspora abroad and others around the world, Thatcher refused to budge. On May 5, 1981, Bobby Sands died of starvation 66 days into his fast at 27 years of age. Over 100,000 mourners lined his cortege in one of the largest political funerals in Irish history.

International outcry

Sands’ death led to international outcry at the treatment of the prisoners and Thatcher’s intransigence in meeting their demands. Critics pointed out that as members of a guerrilla army operating in contested territory, republican prisoners were entitled under the Geneva Convention to be recognised as prisoners of war. One letter, sent from one Bernard Sanders (then-mayor of Burlington, Vermont in the US), stated:

We are deeply disturbed by your government’s unwillingness to stop the abuse, humiliation and degrading treatment of the Irish prisoners now on strike in Northern Ireland…

We ask you to end your intransigent policy towards the prisoners before the reputation of the English people for fair play and simple decency is further damaged in the eyes of the people of Vermont and the United States.

In October 1981, the British government eventually conceded most of the prisoners’ demands; but not before nine more republican hunger strikers had followed Sands to the grave.

This episode perhaps shows more than any other the utter depravity, brutality, ruthlessness and lack of humanity that lurked within the twisted soul of Margaret Thatcher. All but one of the men were under 30 years old and left behind grieving mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and, in some cases, children – all for the ‘crime’ of fighting back against foreign oppression and discrimination in their own country.

Sands’ brave sacrifice stands as an example that all anti-imperialists and advocates of justice can aspire to. But it also serves as a reminder of Thatcher’s sordid legacy of death and destruction in Ireland.

Bobby Sands MP – Died 5 May 1981 on hunger strike in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh