Fresh images of Bobby Sands have emerged after almost 50 years in photographs taken by Lelia Doolan.
The photographs show Bobby taking part in an August 1976 protest against the withdrawal of political status for prisoners in Long Kesh.
They were discovered by Ciaran Cahill, while working on Fr Des’ archive ‘The People’s Archive’ in Springhill Community House.
They are part of a collection of photographs donated to the archive by Lelia Doolan, a keen photographer who chronicled life in Ballymurphy between 1974-77, while studying for a PhD in anthropology at Queens University , titled “Elements of Love and Friendship in some Belfast Housing Estates”.
Leila was a co-worker and personal friend of Fr Des who shared her experience in video, photography, theatre, journalism and television with communities across Belfast including Ballymurphy, Springhill, Ballymacarrett, Short Strand and Sandy Row. Her amazing collection of photographs document activities in those area’s at the time.
Lelia later became the head of light entertainment at RTÉ, artistic director of the Abbey Theatre and directed ‘Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey’, the acclaimed documentary about Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey.
When scanning and cataloguing the negatives, Ciaran first recognised Máire Drumm. When he developed the images, he recalled similar photographs published in 2019 by French photographer Gérard Harlay which captured Bobby Sands. On closer inspection Ciaran discovered Lelia’s photographs also captured Bobby. Both sets of images are of the same protest, the first of many against the British government’s withdrawal of political status.
Lelia’s collection contains 29 images from the August 1976 protest. She photographed the protest as it made its way from the Busy Bee to the Dunville Park. Springhill Community House are delighted to share all 29 images seen here for the first time in almost 50 years.
Bobby Sands, then aged 22, can be clearly seen in the first two images which were published in the Irish News today, he is also captured from a distance in two other images.
In the first photograph Bobby is photographed carrying a flag as the protest makes its way down the Andersonstown Road. (bottom right)
In a second shot, he is pictured on a platform in Dunville Park, alongside senior republicans, including Máire Drumm, Danny Morrison and Joe Stagg, whose brother Frank had died on hunger strike in Wakefield Prison six months previous.
Mrs Drumm, the then vice-president of Sinn Féin and one of the speakers at the rally, was arrested shortly afterwards and jailed for 18 days for taking part in an illegal procession. She was shot dead two months later in the Mater Hospital by gunmen dressed as medical staff.
Pictured next to her at the rally is Sinn Féin member Aindrias O Callaghan from Dublin, who would give the oration at the leading republican’s funeral in Milltown Cemetery.
Bobby had been released from Long Kesh in April 1976, where he had been a political prisoner. He was arrested in October 1976 and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Along with other republican prisoners, he spent several years ‘on the blanket’, protesting against the withdrawal of political status. In April 1981 Bobby was elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone while on hunger strike.
The protest would culminate in the 1981 hunger strike in which he and nine other prisoners died.
We shared the photographs with Danny Morrison, secretary of the Bobby Sands Trust, who said: “These photographs, from almost 50 years ago, are quite evocative, especially when one considers the tragic fates of Máire Drumm and Bobby Sands.”
“I had forgotten that I was covering the protest for our newspaper and it was a surprise to see my younger self, then 23, but even then we instinctively knew that the attempt to criminalise the struggle for Irish independence, as in previous periods, would ultimately fail. However, we had no idea of the magnitude of the suffering to come, inside and outside the prisons, for all those entrapped by this British policy.”
We’ll be sharing more of Lelia’s photographs in the coming weeks.
The long term aim of Springhill Community House is the creation of The Fr Des Wilson interpretive centre, a permanent space for the People’s Archive in West Belfast that would accept donations of personal collections related to the conflict and community activism. It currently contains thousands of documents, recordings, negatives and photographs. It is about: the role of the Catholic Church in the conflict; Fr Des’s ecumenism; local activism; and his role along with others in international campaigns for equal rights and justice.
Collectively, this material tells the story not just of Ballymurphy, but wider West Belfast, and working class communities in the North. It is valuable historical evidence that offers an insight into communities often rendered voiceless by the powers-that-be.
