Its still a very contentious issue and there are many reasons why a person may not want to reveal their identity. Perhaps they are a musician getting gigs in staunchly republican Irish centres, perhaps they live in an area where they live in fear of punishment beatings, perhaps they would upset members of their own family or neighbours. Have a bit of sense about such things.

Whatever you thought of Bobby Sands - 28,000 people voted for him. And this was a wake up call for us English. We had been informed by our media and many of us (myself included)believed that the IRA were an embattled minority - rather than enjoying such popular support. Certainly Sinn Fein have never looked back electorally.

Mrs Thatcher was, who knows ... she was an intelligent woman. The rhetoric of not dealing with terrorists was just for public consumption it turns out - all the time the were dealings going on. God knows what the truth of the matter is. I don't think we will know in our life time.

The idea of the hunger strikes was apparently to have a set piece defeat like 1916 that would ensure ultimate victory. Its hard to imagine the unionists ever wanting to be in a United Ireland that is so tied up with the Catholic church. So how ever clever the strategy - it is hard to see Bobby Sands as anything other than deluded when it comes to thinking that it would be a way past the impasse.

Would his songs be regarded as good songs, if he wasn't who he was . I think yes, but not great songs - not in the same class as the great Republican rebel songs....I don't think theres a Foggy Dew in there.

ChristY moore sings this song that says
Only the very safe can talk about wrong and right

and lets be honest, who knows what it took to make a guy so pissed off that he would do that with his life.

My Mum was dying with cancer when the hunger strike were going on, and I remember the nurse saying to me...theres your Mum hanging on to the slightest thread of life, and those people are throwing their lives away for god knows what.

Either way don't let's get agry with each other over this stuff. If history teahes us anything - it is that the answers when they come are unlikely to be simple.