Republican News · Thursday 24 April 2003

Marking the unbroken struggle

BY ROBBIE SMYTH

Sinn Féin Ard Rúnaí Robbie Smyth delivered the main oration at the Dún Laoghaire commemoration

A drum rolls and the flags lower, earnest faces of a colour party focused on moving in unison, wreaths solemnly laid and the Proclamation read with purpose, all framed by the gentle applause of the hushed crowd. This was a scene repeated across Ireland this week as republicans gathered to mark the 87th anniversary of the Easter Rising and to honour all of those who gave their lives in the cause of Irish freedom.

There is no doubting the solemnity and importance of these commemorations but in a rapidly changing Ireland they have become much more important and provide us with a link between our pasts and the uncertain, unknown future.

The Ireland of today is a vastly different backdrop for the Easter commemorations. This is not just in terms of the changes from the past but also in terms of the experiences of those living right now in different parts of the island. Some of the events may be only miles apart, but for those who have gathered for Easter commemorations, the factors that make them republican and the experience of developing republican politics is often hugely different. So who were the republicans who gathered last weekend across Ireland to mark the Easter rising?

Leitrim

The walk to Bornacoola cemetery and the grave of Jimmy Joe Reynolds was at an easy pace, partially because the local colour party and Kiltubrid pipe band were setting a firm but unchanging pace but also because of the amount of buggies being pushed with small children skipping alongside as adults mingled some chatting quietly.

When just two hours before you were rushing through Dublin's suburbs, landing in Leitrim is a sea change and a refreshing one at that.

The pace of life in rural Ireland seems to have its own internal clock and what was at one minute a lonely T-junction with a front room pub became in a matter of minutes a busy hive filled with cars, a band tuning up and a relaxed colour party expectantly shuffling from foot to foot.

Everyone seemed to know each other, judging from the amount of nods, waves and nick named greetings.

The familiarity of republicans in Dublin, while having the same depth, is more quietly acknowledged and a lot less city republicans have cars than our rural comrades!

Jimmy Joe Reynolds died in 1938 when a mine he was working on prematurely exploded. And it was by his family grave with some of his descendents present that we marked the Easter rising. Leitrim also claims, in Sean MacDiarmada, its own Proclamation signatory.

Maybe it's just a Dublin fixation with the difference between city and country, but the landscape of Leitrim draws your attention. Partially it's the way it has been bypassed by much of the industry of farming. Rush-filled fields were scattered among the more lush pastures in a patchwork of small meadows. Few hedgerows are ripped from the soil here to make way for intensive farming.

Then there were my travelling companions, only too willing to indulge questions about cattle and sheep, who pointed out the suckler cows in the fields. Again, this is a rare sight in modern rural Ireland, as most calves are given milk replacement feeds, the milk of the mothers being deemed more valuable in the creamery than in the stomach of a newborn calf.

Nearby Roosky is dominated by its hotels and pubs, leaving the piggery, once the largest employer in the town, in the shade.

Sligo/Leitrim just missed out on delivering Sinn Féin another TD in 2002 and there is no doubt that the party organisation in both counties can see the seat becoming a reality next time around. One of the messages from this commemoration was the need to pull together for the forthcoming Assembly elections. In Leitrim, there seemed to be no reticence to gearing up once again for busy weeks knocking on the doors of Fermanagh. There is no doubt that they, in their sure but unhurried way, will get the job done.

Bray

Bray is a town in transition and so is the Sinn Féin organisation there.

This commemoration is one of the newest, having only begun last year. The route begins at the town hall and goes through the town's main street over the Dargle into little Bray to a new-built 1798 monument at a place the locals call Bloody Bank, because of the loss of life there during that rebellion.

The rain on Easter Monday didn't seem to deter the 70 marchers who gathered behind a lone piper and colour party. The commemoration was chaired by Marie Gavaghan and the talk before proceedings was of quotas and wards in not just Bray UDC but also Wicklow County Council, all aimed at building towards next year's local and EU elections. Bray republicans have a much higher mountain to climb than their Leitrim companions.

Here was a local party that is trying to demonstrate its relevance in a much more focused way. Bray is still very much a local town but benefits from the resource rich east coast in comparison to which Leitrim is starved. Where Leitrim is developing a tourist economy, Bray is a town supplanting its tourist image with a more international one. Now the largest employer is not the B&Bs, amusements and dodgems, but computer giant Dell, and the town hall where we gathered is also home to the local McDonald's.

It seems that in Bray the seat of local democracy sits easily with international business. It doesn't explain, though, the unmet housing need, with over 500 households on waiting lists or the lack of a full-time fire service.

Deansgrange

The mock gothic monuments, statues, crypts and aged evergreens give Deansgrange cemetery an eerie atmosphere lost in many modern graveyards.

The 250 people who crowded around the republican plot could have been from any previous republican generation, especially when you saw some of the

marchers wearing medals from the Tan War and the Civil War.

But then there were others, one waving a Palestinian flag, others taking snaps with digital cameras and again the young activists, with the children asking the inevitable 'are we there yet?' Deansgrange is the resting place not just for Volunteers from 1916, the Tan War and the Civil War but also to Sinn Féin member Noel Jenkinson, who died in Leicestershire Prison in 1973.

The Republican Plot was last opened in 1967 to inter Reginald Dunne and Joseph O'Sullivan. The two had been executed in Wandsworth prison over 40 years earlier for the killing of Henry Wilson, commander of British Forces in Ireland, who had among many things instigated the first Belfast Pogroms.

As the Hugh Hehir/Lisa Bell band played the national anthem, it was clear that though it was once again the Easter weekend, and yes like 1916 the races at Fairyhouse were still drawing crowds, something else was evolving. Here was a local commemoration that had within its attendance future councillors and even TDs.

The nature of the republican struggle for peace with justice differs across time and across the island but in every case it is unbroken and unbowed.