What was claimed
A photo shows Jeremy Corbyn with the IRA.
Our verdict
The man in the photo is not Jeremy Corbyn.
This is not a picture of Jeremy Corbyn with the IRA
29 April 2019
A picture falsely claiming to show Jeremy Corbyn standing with Gerry Adams, watching as the IRA fire guns has been shared over 15,000 times.
The claim that Mr Corbyn can be seen in the image has been previously debunked by BuzzFeed. The image was previously widely shared in 2017, along with the same claim that Mr Corbyn is visible in the photo.
The image itself is real: it is a photograph of IRA member Bobby Sands’ funeral on May 7, 1981, following his death while on hunger strike in prison. However, while the image does show Gerry Adams and members of the IRA, other photographs from the funeral clearly show that the man pictured is not Mr Corbyn.
In an email to Full Fact, the Bobby Sands Trust told us that the man is actually Jim Gibney, then part of the National H-Block/Armagh Committee (a pressure group campaigning for political status for Republican prisoners), and now an aide to Sinn Féin Senator Niall O’Donnghaile. Gibney can be seen in this picture (fifth from the right) from a few months earlier in 1981.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false as it incorrectly states that Mr Corbyn is present in the image.