The Body as Weapon: Bobby Sands and the Republican Hunger Strikes

Introduction

1.1 The 1981 Hunger Strike in Northern Ireland resulted in Bobby Sands and nine other republican prisoners losing their lives. The Hunger Strike, and a series of other prison based protest beforehand, came about as both a response to changes in British prison policy and the wider Northern Irish political situation. Key to this phase of ‘The Troubles’ was the use that the prisoners made of their bodies and embodied activity as a way of resisting and fighting back against the prison warders and the British state. In effect their bodies became weapons in this conflict. This has parallels with contemporary instances where minority political groups use their bodies and embodied activity as part of a wider struggle with groups who possess greater political, technological and military resources. Obviously, one can draw attention to September 11^th in New York, the 7/7 tube and bus bombings in London and asylum seekers in Glasgow stitching their mouths, though these events will not be discussed here.

1.2 This paper will explore the Hunger Strike to theorise the ‘body-as-weapon’, and how, in this case, the body and embodied activity were effective in realising certain goals of a minority political group. Though there have been some quite insightful studies of this event, such as anthropologist Feldman (1991), who first used the term ‘body-as-weapon’, there is little from the perspective of sociology of the body. It is from this standpoint that the theoretical basis of my argument will proceed ^[1] .

1.3 Opening with an interrogation of key themes within the sociology of the body attention will then turn to looking at issues of the body and embodiment within the British/ Irish conflict. Here, it will demonstrated that the body has long acted as a significant resource, whether symbolically or materially within the conflict. Before moving onto a fuller discussion of the ‘body-as-weapon’, one competing explanation of the Hunger Strike, that of it being inspired by romantic Gaelic mythology and traditions of Catholic martyrdom, will be critiqued. Finally, the ‘body as weapon’ will be theorised, mainly in context of the Hunger Strike, but also offering possibilities for wider theoretical deployment. The main points developed here will be how the ‘body-as-weapon’ (i) acts as a resource for minority political groups; (ii) destabilises notions of the body in modernity and related to that point (iii) engages in a ‘hidden’ impulse of modernity, that of self-sacrifice.

Sociology of the body

2.1 As stated above, this paper takes its theoretical orientation from the sociology of the body, and from this analyses the body and embodiment within violent political conflict. Before doing so, it will be useful to foreground my discussion with a summary and review of sociology of the body. The body and embodiment are now firmly part of the sociological imagination with a whole sub-discipline (for a fuller account see Shilling, 2005) generating a variety of empirical and theoretical insights into the relationship between the body and society. In many respects a sociological concern with the body is comparatively recent beginning in the late 1970's and early 1980's (Turner 2003: 272, Yuill and Lewis, 2003). One can, however, detect in the classical canon an appreciation or awareness of the body in the works of Marx (Yuill 2005), Durkheim (Shilling, 1997, 2001) and Weber (Turner, 1993), the body here being, in Shilling's (1993) words, an ‘absent presence’. Due to sociology having to stake out its own distinctive realm of study the body was put aside with emphasis falling on the non-corporeal rational social actor (Burkitt, 1999). This is evident in one of Durkheim's (1968: 1) reflections on the genesis of the discipline: ‘sociology would have no subject matter exclusively its own, and its domain would be confused with that of biology and psychology.’

2.2 In many ways, the history of sociology has mirrored the Cartesian mind-body dualism (and all the attendant problems and complications that poses) inhered in western intellectual traditions. This dualist position would be challenged though, by developments, within both society and the academy, that would bring issues of the body into sharp relief for sociologists, (Shilling, 2005: 2-5). These trends included the awareness of the body's importance within consumerism (Featherstone, 1991); feminist challenges to malestream sociology (Grosz, 1994); Foucaldian concerns of governmentality; and the dividing lines between nature and society (Haraway, 1991). One could also add medical sociology where, as Williams and Bendelow (1998a: 22) appositely remark, that when studying, ‘pain and suffering, sickness, disability and death the body has been an implicit, if not explicit, theme.’ There has though, been insufficient attention paid to the body in violent political conflict, a theme this paper will tackle.

2.3 In terms of theoretically addressing the body Turner's (1984) The Body and Society stands as a landmark development. Turner advances a theory that focuses on the ‘downstream’ effects of somatic society and it imprinting on the body societal patterns and restraints, though lately he (Tuner, 1996) has tried to introduce an ‘upstream’ understanding of how bodies are experienced phenomenologically, and can be active in creating and (re)producing society. This development chimes with a wider move within sociology of the body. Here we see a shift towards seeing the body not as a passive object, receiving of society, but as an agentic subject, transforming of society. This avoids reproducing a dualism where a structural focus is on what happens to body implying a separation from the mind. Williams and Bendelow (1998a: 208, their emphasis) usefully summarise this way of seeing the body as, ‘an active, expressive, ‘mindful’ form of embodiment that serves not only as the existential basis of culture and self, but also of social institutions and society generally.’ Other sociologists such as Crossley (1995), have drawn on the phenomenology of the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty (2002 [1945]) to assist in theoretically grounding this departure, seeking to access the Leib, lived experience of the body, centring on the experiential aspects of embodiment. It is this active embodiment that will be highlighted during the discussion of the ‘body-as-weapon’.

2.4 Other theoretical influences emerge from the work of Goffman (1968) and Bourdieu (1984) where the body acts as a form of social resource, or as part of a project, where the body is worked upon to meet certain needs and ends Shilling (1993). Goffman's micro-sociology builds on the everyday dramas of identity management centred on the body (Williams and Bendelow, 1998). The body, adorned, posturing and presented in specific ways allows for social acceptance and it is with the body the everyday social world is encountered and negotiated. For Bourdieu the body offers a physical capital that can unlock and access social and cultural capital (Shilling, 1993).

2.5 Even though not explicitly concentrating on the body, the work of Elias (2000) also possesses insights for sociology of the body (Shilling, 1993: 150). Central to Elias’ sociology is the dynamic and relational ‘civilising process’ whereby, among other interrelated processes, the body becomes individualised, rationalised and socialised. Thus, the further along the civilising curve a society is, the more the body becomes ‘worked upon’. Here people are required to conform to ever increasing societal and internal impulses that seek to restrain, control and refine aspects of biological function and embodied practice, with bodies acquiring an individual as opposed to group identity. One example of this restraint on the body, as expounded by Inglis (2002), is that of the disposal and status of excrement. In modernity such matters become a hidden and potentially shameful activity. Given the prominent use of excrement in the hunger strike this will be developed at greater length.

2.6 Despite this variety of ontological and epistemological differences and convergences, as indicated above, within the sociology of the body, Shilling (2005: 199) concludes that it offers a ‘multi-dimensional medium for the constitution of society.’

The body in the Irish Conflict

3.1 The body and embodiment have been important in many of the conflicts between Britain and Ireland. Historically, there is the placing of the wild Irish body ‘beyond the pale’, where a defensive and symbolic barrier around the south of Dublin separated the ‘civilised’ English settlers from the ‘barbarous’ Irish. Again, historically, there have also been a movement of bodies following the depopulation of Ireland that occurred in and around the Great Famine. The colonial relationship at this time between Britain and Ireland manifested itself in the starving bodies of the Irish peasantry. The failure of the potato crop is often cited as being the cause of this tragedy. But as de Paor (1970) points out there was enough food in Ireland to avert the thousands of deaths. Tragically however, the needs of the Irish people were subordinated to the profit making needs of the Anglo-Irish land owning elites. In the recent and ongoing ‘Troubles we have seen various demographic convulsions and mass movements of bodies being displaced, whether voluntary or involuntary, to live in areas dominated by their co-religionists. While rejecting the notions of a deepening apartheid in Northern Ireland, and questioning the basis of the data by which religio-spatial segregation is measured, Anderson and Shuttleworth (1998) conclude that there have been significant increases in the sectarian geography of Northern Ireland.

3.2 Within Republicanism the idea of the ‘sacrificed’ or ‘martyred’ body plays an important symbolic role. The flawed, and overly ambitious, 1916 uprising owed perhaps more to the Romanticism of leading republican Pearse, than to good solid revolutionary tactics. The consequent executions of the ringleaders turned popular support towards the Republicans and away from the British state, with the martyred ringleaders gaining an almost quasi-religious status after their deaths (Allen, 1990). There is also, of course, Pearse's (in)famous invocation and exaltation of the martyred body he provided in his oration at the funeral of O'Donnovan Rossa:

3.3 Following on from the last point, funerals, and their subsequent mass mobilisation of ordinary people to attend them, also indicate another important use of the body within the Republican tradition. Thousands of people could be expected to attend the funeral of an ‘ordinary’ IRA volunteer at the height of the Troubles, with tens of thousands attending the funeral of Bobby Sands (Toolis, 1995). From a Durkheimian perspective we can witness such events as providing a renewal and reinvigoration of the emotional commitment – an instance of emotional effervescence - to the Republican cause.

3.4 It is just not within Republican/ Nationalist traditions that the body plays an important role. For Unionists, particularly working class loyalists, the heavy losses suffered by the 36^th Ulster Division during the Battle of the Somme in World War One carries a great deal of symbolic, cultural and political importance. This historical event is often invoked by loyalist paramilitaries to justify and legitimate present day activities. Recruited out of the Carson's anti-Irish Home Rule Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) the 36^th Ulster Regiment were the embodiment of Ulster Protestant pro-British Unionism. On the first three days of the Somme German machine gun fire inflicted 5500 casualties with nearly 3000 fatalities (Graham & Shirlow, 2002: 882). This particular blood sacrifice, ‘has become central to the imaginative narratives of memory that underpins loyalist self-identification (Graham and Shirlow, 2002: 888). Murals in working class loyalist areas often make much use of this bodily sacrifice, constituting one of the main historical images deployed in loyalist street-art (Rolston, 1991). Again, the ‘sacrificed body’ plays a role in the current conflict but this time within the narratives of Unionism and Loyalism.

3.5 The main use of the body though, which I wish to concentrate on in this paper, is the use of the body within the various prison struggles that existed in Northern Ireland from the mid-seventies to the early eighties. Many commentators (for example, Clarke, 1987; English, 2003) make mention of how the ‘battlefield’ of the Troubles shifted away from urban streets and quiet country lanes to the prisons; particularly that of Long Kesh. Throughout the late seventies and early eighties the British government attempted to redefine the status of republican prisoners, seeking to recast then as criminals instead of the prisoners-of-war they perceived themselves to be. This involved revoking the special status the prisoners previously held, which allowed them to effectively organise large parts of prison lives for themselves and, crucially, wear their own clothes. Part of the British government's crimilisation process entailed the wearing of a prison uniform, or ‘monkey suit’ as the prisoners referred to them. This shift in policy, which saw a symbolic reordering of the prisoners’ bodies from soldier to criminal, was the cause of the prison conflict. The prisoners resisted by refusing to wear the new uniform and declining food. The consequences of which, were to see prisoners clothed only in blankets, starving themselves to death and living in cells filled with excrement. Many prisoners also reported being physically abused by prison warders.

3.6 I shall now turn more squarely to the role of the body in ‘the reality of life in a seven-foot concrete box, with a Bible, mattress, three blankets and a cell-mate for company’ (Beresford, 1994: 27). In his writings, Sands frequently highlights the body, making constant reference to the pained and brutalised bodies of himself and other prisoners. We read of bodies ‘aching’, ‘burning’, ‘freezing’, ‘shivering’, ‘gasping’, ‘smelling’, becoming ‘physically wrecked’ and ‘degenerating’. There is also much reference to enduring the ‘crawling’ and ‘pestering’ presence of parasitic insects. The ultimate result of this privation saw bodies becoming ‘a living corpse’, which was ‘useless’, ‘tattered’, and ‘battered bloody’. As the preceding summary indicates much of the experience is one of pain and unremitting hardship. There are also many descriptions of the waste products of the body adding to the privation, for example:

3.8 Other prisoners too were highly aware of their bodies and the changes that were happening to them:

Myths and Martyrs

4.1 Before dealing with a fuller explication of the body as weapon one important other explanation of the hunger strike has to be interrogated and dismissed. This line of thought argues that the Hunger Strike fits into a tradition within Irish culture that emphasises and valorises bodily denial and starvation. Within Republican circles, and among some writers, such as O'Malley (1990) and Sweeney (1993), it is suggested that this is so. One tradition that is referred to is Brehon law. Arising in pre-Christian times this custom involved an aggrieved person forgoing food, while situated near the person with whom they were in dispute. If the aggrieved person died then it was the responsibility of the other party, who, in turn, would then have to face the problems of compensating the now deceased's family, and risk the ‘magical consequences’ of living in a ‘polluted state’ (Sweeney, 1993: 422, Beresford, 1994). As Sweeney (1993: 422) notes this ‘was a tactic employed by the powerless against the powerful.’

4.2 There are some fundamental problems with this particular explanation. Firstly, it presupposes a seamless primordial ethnie stretching back into time forming an uninterrupted link between the distant past and the immediate present. This echoes the debate that exists in the study of national identity. This debate turns on whether the nation (and related ideas of culture and history) is basically bound up in the project of modernity (for example, Anderson, 1991) or whether there exists a pre-modern ethnic navel (for example, Smith, 1986). As Beresford observes there are few examples of self-starvation between the middle-ages and the late 1800's. Historian Hutton (1993: 284) also warns that in ‘In the search for ‘pagan survivials’ the historian encounters …enormous problems.’ This is mainly due to a total lack of evidence that the custom in question has survived intact given the ‘year zero’ influence of Christianity, the historical arrival of which effectively removed more pagan myths than incorporated them. Hutton (1994) also advises on being wary of Romantic or Victorian attempts to revive ancient pagan myths and customs. Often such attempts recast such myths in the light of their times, effectively divorcing the myth from any historical accuracy.

4.3 The influence of Catholicism may also play a role in the Hunger Strike. Catholicism has undoubtedly been a strong player within Irish culture. T. Inglis (2003) points to how Catholicism has played a uniquely pivotal role in Irish history and culture, not only dominating the religious field, but also strongly influencing other fields as well: the Catholic habitus of self-denial and self-deprecation, for example, being important for social acceptance within Irish society. For O'Malley (1990) the martyr tradition in Catholicism was an important factor in the Hunger Strike. Many of the murals painted during the time of the Hunger Strike also witnessed testimony to this putative relationship of Catholicism with the Hunger Strike. Murals often depicted the hunger strikers alongside angels or Christ, some portraying the hunger strikers in religious or quasi-religious representations (Rolston, 1991). It too would be tempting to also assume that there is a direct proximal influence of Catholicism. Feldman (1991) disputes this and notes in his interviews with the hunger strikers their reasons for embarking on the hunger strike were secular not sacral. A reading also of some of the written output by surviving hunger strikers, particularly that of McKeown (2001, and also Campbell et al., 1994), also supports this view that religion's role was not strong.

4.4 The role of Catholic traditions and the pre-Christian Brehon laws is not then to act as a direct proximal influence, but rather as a resource that could be deployed to add further legitimacy and political expediency. By adopting the imagery of Catholicism, or appealing to ancient Irish tradition, the hunger strikers could further emplace themselves as oppressed people fighting for higher ideals and as contemporary examples of heroic Irish culture (Coulter, 1999).

The ‘body-as-weapon’

5.1 So how can we define or put forward the concept of the ‘body-as-weapon'? Feldman (1991) in his anthropological account of the hunger strike explored the body as weapon in relation to Nietzsche, Spinoza and Foucault. The body here is ‘a cumulative effect of exchanges between agonistic forces’ (Feldman, 1991: 177). In true Foucauldian style Feldman sees the coexistence of oppression and resistance taking place on the prisoners’ bodies. Whenever there was an act of violence carried on the body by the prison staff there was a counter-defilement by the prisoners to attempt a reversal of power (Feldman, 1991: 178-9). Therefore, the body becomes a weapon, the means by which the prisoners strike back at the authorities, or as a former hunger striker reported, ‘from the moment we hit the H-Block we had used our bodies as a protest weapon’ (Feldman, 1991: 179). There is much merit in Feldman's observation here, but his comments on the ‘body as weapon’ are fairly brief and will benefit from expansion by drawing on the insights from the sociology of the body. This section then will further theoretically explore the hunger strike. Much of the analysis will pertain to the ‘body-as-weapon’ in this context, but comments will be made that could be expanded to other instances of the body and embodiment being used in this manner.

Concluding comments

6.1 In the context of Northern Ireland, Bobby Sands and the other hunger strikers using their bodies as weapons effected a considerable change, the main impact being to accelerate the Republican movement into emphasising the ballot box over the bomb (English, 2003). Sands’ victory in the Fermanagh/ South Tyrone by-election alerted the Republican movement to the possibilities and opportunities that political power and influence could bring, an avenue that they had been wary of pursuing in the past. ^[2] Importantly though, as we have seen, the hunger strikers actions were not prompted by a mythic past or the narratives of self sacrifice immanent within Catholicism but out of cold hard political reality. That reality meaning that they had to turn to the one resource they had available to them: their embodiment.

6.2 This wilful agentic embodiment provides an example of how, and why, embodiment can exert ‘upstream’ influences on society leading both to resistance and engagement with social structures. It also provides an example, previously undertheorised within sociology of the body, of how embodiment figures in political situations, especially where violence and conflict are present. This exploration of the ‘body-as-weapon’ should provide a timely contribution both to sociology of the body and an understanding, given current global politics, of contemporary uses of the ‘body-as-weapon’.