| April 9 |  |
Editor says, what if the ideology of the Worker's Party and it's military wing, the Official IRA, was the most popular amongst nationalists during "the Troubles"? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the April 2010 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1981, on this day Robert Sands was elected as Member of Parliament in a by-election for the Fermanagh and South Tyrone district of Northern Ireland, on a ticket for "The Worker's Party of Ireland".
"Our revenge will be the laughter of our children" by Gerry ShannonSands' election is historical for several reasons. At age 29, he is the youngest MP ever elected in the United Kingdom, but he is yet another electoral success for the Marxist-Leninist Worker's Party - a further vindication of the far left strategy persued by party leaders Cathal Goulding and Sean Garland following the split in the republican Sinn Féin party in 1970. The party most notably has a parliamilitary wing, the Official Irish Republican Army, of which Sands was a member until it's permanent ceasefire in 1972.
In his victory speech, Sands claims: "Our revenge will be the laughter of our children". In this oft-repeated phrase by his admirers in the decades after, Sands made clear his intention to destroy the inequality amongst the working class of the Unionist-dominated state forever when he took his seat in the power-sharing government in Stormont. (The power-sharing executive had been in place since the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973).
He would keep his seat through subsequent elections until resigning to become a candiate in the 1990 presidential election for the twenty-six counties of the Republic of Ireland. Sands was the shared nominee for the Worker's Party and Labour. Sands would win, and would serve the fourteen years of two terms as President until leaving office in 2004 - quite possibly the most popular holder of the title of President thus far in the history of the Irish Republic. Outside of political life, Sands would also become a semi-regular author of several collections of short stories and poetry, mostly written in Irish.
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Gerry Shannon
© Gerry Shannon, 2008-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: Ireland, IRA, Troubles, Bobby Sands, Britain. Editor says, of course, "Our revenge will be the laughter of our children" is a quote from Sands' prison diary which he kept during his imprisonment as a member of the Provisional IRA. The prison diary was published years after his famous (and fatal) hunger strike for "political status" by the British government. During the hunger strike, Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, put him forward as a candidate for the Fermanagh-Tyrone by-election - which he won. "The People's Own MP" is an Irish rebel song by Christy Moore, about Bobby Sands.
~ You could make a whole book out of this...
~ I never did understand the logic of hunger striking, but then, I _looooved_ Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado." A persistent hunger striker might wake up to find me happily bricking up the door to his cell...
~ FF is not the same party in Donegal as it is in Cork.
OIRA was discredited in the early days of the troubles. ``Irish (I) ran away=IRA''
Officials were a Dublin based party.
You need the British to break the UUCW strike. To save sunningdale, and then a good chance a large part of the Unionist votes to wreck it
Unlikely that a northern socialist would hold office
Comment from Gerry - Completely agree with the guy's POV, as that's what happened. But this is a historical fantasy after all.
~ Though Bobby Sands was elected to Parliament in OTL, he would not have been permitted to take his seat even had he not been in prison, unless he swore allegiance to the Queen - which as an IRA member he would have refused to do. Possibly in this scenario he would have taken the same steps as a member of the Scottish National Party (whose name escapes me) when she was elected to the first Scottish Parliament in 1999 - she swore allegiance with her fingers crossed!
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
