Barnes and McCormack remembered
There was a large attendance outside the gates of Winson Green Prision, Birmingham, for the Barnes/McCormack Commemoration on Saturday 7 October. The two republicans were hanged in the prision in 1940. The event, organised by the Phoenix Society, also remembered Volunteer James McDade.
Debbie Grue, of the Manchester Martyrs Commemoration Committee reminded the gathering that the Martyrs would again be commemorated at the Moston Cemetery on 19 November, and called for support for this historical event.
Paddy MacLochlainn, on behalf of the Phoenix Society, recalled events from the life and death of James McDade, who was killed on active service in nearby Coventry.
The main speaker, Eddie Caughey, a veteran campaigner for republican prisioners but speaking on behalf of the Irish in Britain Representation Group, said that Barnes, McCormack, and McDade were three out of many hundreds of republicans who had given their lives for the cause of Irish freedom. Even so, he said, though he had been about ten years old when Barnes and McCormack had been hanged, the executions had made a big impact on his own family as well as on many other families in Ireland at the time.
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