Dublin remembers with pride
In amongst the graves of O'Donovan Rossa, of The O'Rahilly, of Muriel Gifford, Constance Markievicz, Thomas Ashe, Harry Boland, Joe Clarke, at the republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, many hundreds of people came last Saturday to commemorate the hunger strikers on the anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands.
In bright sunshine, people came from all over the city. There were people from that generation who had tramped the streets, day after day, in bitter protest at the Dublin government's apparent willingness to collaborate with Mrs. Thatcher's determination to let the hunger strikers die. There were also hundreds from a younger generation, hardly born at the time of Bobby Sands' death, but who recognised, by their presence last Saturday, the significance in Irish history of the 1981 hunger strike.
They stood around the edge of history, just a part of the long history of painful extraordinary events, of which they too were a part, and will be a part in the unchartered future of the struggle for freedom in this country.
They came to hear a programme that was both heart-rending, full of memories of anger and tragedy, and also full of hope, not least because of the very youthful crowd of young men and women who take the struggle on today and who know and commemorate its history.
Íta Ní Chionnaith, a member of the National H-Block Armagh Committee at the time, introduced a programme of poetry and music. Cathal Ó Murchú laid a wreath.
Noel Hughes read the 22 names of those who had died down the century on hunger strike: of Thomas Ashe (1917), Terence McSwiney, Michael Fitzgerald and Joseph Murphy (192?), of Joseph Whitty, Denis Barry and Andy Sullivan, who died in 1923, under the Cosgrave's government, of Tony D'Arcy and Sean McNeela, who died under De Valera's government in 1940, of Sean McCaughey, who died after three years in solitary confinement in Portlaoise in 1940, and of Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg, who died in English jails in 1974 and 1976, respectively, and the ten who died in 1981.
Then, Néillidh Mulligan played a beautiful lament on the uilleann pipes, music that withered the heart, as from across the hills.
Ulick O'Connor, poet and republican, read one of his poems and spoke of how those who rebelled against kings, from the earliest times of Irish history, had sent their message across the world along the ``cable of the spirit''. It had reached far and wide, even to a street called after Bobby Sands in Tehran, where the British embassy to Iran is sited.
Ella O'Dwyer, who herself took part in the H-Block campaign, who subsequently spent 14 years in an English jail, who has herself written and lived that ``inner thing in every man, which had withstood the blows of a million years, and will do so to the end'', read Bobby Sands' marvellous poem, The Rhythm of Time - ``It lights the dark of this prison cell, it thunders forth its might, it is Ôthe undauntable thought', my friend, that thought that says ÔI'm right'.''
Then two young women, Niamh Ní Dálaigh and Lorraine O'Donnell, read in Irish and in English from Bobby Sands' prison diary, of the unconquereable struggle for freedom. They were followed by Karan Casey, who sang, in a most beautiful clear unwavering voice, the song written by Ulick O'Connor, to the tune of Danny Boy, across those graves.
d then Séanna Breatnach spoke, quietly, almost informally, of those days in Long Kesh. He was altogether 21 years in jail, in the camps, the H Block blanket protest and then again from 1988 to 1998.
``In 1988 the OC of the jail asked me, as a part of the history programme they were running for people who had just come into the jail, to talk about the blanket protest. I said, sure no problem. I began. I broke down. I couldn't talk about it. It was so raw. These feelings come back to me when I come to a place like this.''
He told of the prison camp in the cages, with Nissen Huts, barbed wire and soldiers with machine guns who guarded the prisoners of war. ``The conditions in the early Ô70s, which followed Billy McKee's hunger strike in May and June 1972, were just as that portrayed in the films of the last world war prison camps,'' he said.
Then, arrested in 1976, Walsh was amongst the first to which Roy Mason's new prison policy to criminalise the republican struggle applied. ``I was 20 in 1976. We were kids. We hadn't the least idea what to do. But we decided we would not wear the uniform and we wouldn't do prison work.'' Kieran Nugent was the first to be sentenced and to move to the Blocks. ÔThey'll have to nail it to my back,' he said.
``It goes back to the time of O'Donovan Rossa, chained for years in Dartmoor prison, with his hands behind his back, forced to eat as a dog. We wouldn't allow our struggle to be criminalised. It is so important that young people today know of these times, that they get a sense of the brutality, of the suffering. It is so important that the hunger strike experience is not forgotten, that young people know about it. That's why I am here today.
``We were only youngsters. Often we were head to head with the IRA, who saw what was going on as a distraction and were terrified lest it would lead to a hunger strike.
``The hunger strike was as much about those who weren't on hunger strike, the women in Armagh, the thousands across the country who walked the streets day after day. This is Bobby's day, but we should not forget too Kieran Doherty and also Paddy Agnew were both elected TDs. When Kieran Doherty died, the Dublin government didn't even lower the Tricolour.''
He talked of the ending of the hunger strike. Laurence McKeown after 70 days went into a coma. His mother, just before, had said to him: ``You've done what you had to do. I'll do what I have to do.'' Seana Walsh urged people to go to the events around the hunger strike, many of which are coming up in the next few weeks.
O'Connell Bridge vigil
Many hundreds of people gathered on 5 May, the 20th anniversary of Bobby Sands' death, on O'Connell Street Bridge, in memory of those daily vigils 20 years ago as the prisoners faced death. Those vigils had brought people from all walks of life to protest their anguish at the recurring deaths, as the Dublin government watched and waited. Old and young attended the vigil, all with their different parts played or still to play.
Walkinstown
Around 100 members and supporters of Sinn Féin held a vigil at Walkinstown Roundabout on Sunday 5 May, to commemorate the sacrifice of the 1981 hunger strikers.
Local Sinn Féin representative Aengus Ó Snodaigh praised the hunger strikers. ``Today 20 years ago the first of the ten young men, Bobby Sands, died after 66 days on hunger strike. We commend his courage and bravery in the face of British government intransigence and an agonisingly slow death.''
Drumcondra
About 20 members of the original Drumcondra branch of the Anti-H Block/Armagh Committee staged a picket in their area in memory of the hunger strikers on 5 May.
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