Well, friends, I will tell you why I think this is an important time for such a film. The US and Britain are once again using torture in prisons in order to spark what they hoped would be a controllable war, as they did in Ireland, for reasons about which they are telling untruths.

The war in Ireland was to keep NATO forces on the soil of a non aligned nation, and as soon as the USSR broke up, and Ireland put aside neutrality in the first gulf war, suddenly, Britain found they could negotiate with the IRA.

Bobby Sands was not political, until he was dragged from his job, when his Protestant fellow workers found he was Catholic, and knifed him. He went to the police and was told, you should not have worked in a Protestant's job.

Bobby Sands was no terrorist. In fact, every time the British government tried to make the point in a neutral court, in Geneva or the US, they failed. We toss about the term terrorist so that the world can fight wars designed by sociopaths the like of George Bush and Paul Wolfowitz.

The hunger strike came about because the conditions in British jails in Ireland made Abu Greb look civilized. You toss terms around like ignorant and insults. Well, friends if you had seen the inside of the Maidstone and the Maze, well, few of you would have called those who opposed such inhumanity ignorant, unless you were driven by the same prejudice which guided so many in Ireland. Don't ask me, seek out members of the Troops Out movement, British soldiers who saw too much, ask Frank Holroid... well, it is whistling in the wind ... there is little one can say to the patriot, who will follow the guns into a gave for the benefit of a government who in the end, laughs at him all the way to the bank.

I had the great honnor of knowing Bobby Sands' cell mate, Tony O'Hara, whose brother died on hunger strike as well. Sands was a remarkable young man, and a loss to the formation of Ireland's future. Those who ask why he had guns, might well ask, why your government brought the guns your tax money bought into Ireland?

Is mise, le meas,
Lorcan Otway