On Wednesday the 5th May, as I reflected on the 40th Anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands on hunger strike in Long Kesh, I received the news that John Elliott, a distant relative and a prominent Attorney at Law in Philadelphia, USA, had died. The death of anyone is a sad occasion but the news of John’s death coming on the day that it was, provoked in me a deep sense of grief and sadness. For it was the desperate plight of prisoners In the North of Ireland and the death Of Bobby Sands that took me 3000 miles across the Atlantic to meet the Elliott family whose ancestors long ago had left Derry and settled in the USA.