Republicans gathered at the gravesides of Republicans Leo Duignan and Dermot McGuirk in Shanganagh cemetery, Shankill, Co Dublin on Sunday 22nd March 1998. The procession to the graveside was led by Paddy Smyth carrying the National Flag.
Proceedings were chaired by John Gilrane at the first ceremony. Joe Curneen of Leitrim laid a wreath on behalf of the Republican Movement at Leo Duignan’s graveside, the late Leo’s daughter, Muireann recited a decade of the rosary and also played a lament on the tin whistle.
The Last Post and Reveille was played with the dipping of the National flag. The ceremony concluded with the playing of Amhrán na bhFiann.
At the second ceremony Harry McAuley, Belfast, laid a wreath on behalf of Liam Mellows Cumann, Republican Sinn Féin, Baile Átha Cliath at the grave of Dermot McGuirk. Muireann Duignan recited a decade of the rosary. She also played lament on the tin whistle. Once again the Last Post was played with the dipping of the National Flag. Cathleen Knowles (McGuirk) the late Dermot’s wife was among the crowd present. The ceremony came to a conclusion with the playing of Amhrán na bhFiann.
Afterwards three Republicans were stopped and harassed coming from the Annual Commemoration.
About a half-mile from the Cemetery two Branch-men in a white car with their siren blazing stopped the car of Republican Tom Ryan. Branchman Michael Devine asked for drivers licence and insurance in a very nervous and tense way. Both political policemen seemed nervous and agitated.
One of the occupants of the car, Paddy Smyth, was asked to get out of the car and Branchman Devine body searched him in what was obviously an attempt to humiliate him in public.
After searching the car boot they drove off.
Contents
On Sunday, March 15, Wexford Republican Sinn Féin marked the 75th anniversary of the executions of James Parle, John Creane and Patrick Hogan, with a ceremony in the Republican Garden of Remembrance, Wexford town, located in the old jail yard where the executions took place on March 13, 1923.
The proceedings were chaired by Séamas Mac Suain.
Wreaths were laid on behalf of the families of the executed men by Paddy Hogan, nephew of Patrick Hogan; Mrs Kavanagh, on behalf of Wexford Republican Sinn Féin; Tom Malone, on behalf of the National Graves Association and Tommy Stanley on behalf of Kildare Republican Sinn Féin.
Ard-Chomhairle member Des Dalton, Kildare, in his oration, said that the current process was aimed simply at “erecting yet another barrier to protect British interests in Ireland.”
He went on to say: “If Irish history teaches us anything it is that a lasting peace can only follow a British withdrawal from Ireland.”
The ceremonies concluded with a rendition of the Last Post and Reveille and Amhrán Na bhFiann.
Contents
A workable solution must transcend all the failed models which have been tried in the past.
— AP/RN, March 5, 1998. Stormont is a failed model of the past and, even with nationalist input, will not work now. A British withdrawal, which is not on the ‘peace process’ agenda, is the only workable settlement.
One of the suspects has since claimed that he passed on information about the murder [of Séamus Ludlow near Dundalk in May 1976] to an RUC Special Branch detective in 1987 and was told “Forget it, it’s political”.
— Irish Independent, March 10, 1998.
Pigeons at the Sellafield nuclear plant are so contaminated that a thousand of them are being exterminated.
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate is so alarmed at the results of the tests that it has ordered British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), the owner of the plant in Cumbria, to kill seagulls, rabbits and other wildlife before testing them for contamination.
Two sisters who run a pigeon hospital at their home in the nearby village of Seascale are having all but a dozen of their 700 pigeons culled. Parts of their garden and drive will have to be dug up and disposed of as nuclear waste because they have been contaminated by feathers and droppings . . . Yesterday the environmentalists Greenpeace released contamination figures for six culled birds from the Robinsons garden that were sent to France for analysis.
The most common radionuclide was caesium-137, a by-product of nuclear fission released by re-processing nuclear fuel on the Sellafield site. It reached 403,000 becquerels, a figure which automatically classifies the pigeons as nuclear waste. Their bodies cannot now be moved or disposed of without a licence.
Another substance was cerium-144, a shorter lived radionuclide, which shows that the pigeons are being contaminated by work currently going on at Sellafield – something that BNFL denies.
— Guardian, March 12, 1998.
In truth, however, unionists became exercised about Articles 2 and 3 only when they were alerted by the breast-beating of Southern politicians to the possibility that this argument would give them cover for failing to agree to any changes themselves.
— John Waters, Irish Times, March 17, 1998.
. . . the stated objectives of those who wish to appease unionism cannot be achieved other than by the insertion of deliberate untruths into the Constitution, for example the assertion that the Irish nation has no territorial dimension, or that its territorial dimension is confined to the 26-County State. Anyone who voted for either of these propositions would be voting for a lie.
— John Waters.
This issue was never about achieving peace or change in the North, but about distancing the Southern middle-class from a history it could not stomach. Articles 2 and 3 are the political equivalent of the Angelus broadcasts on RTÉ. Both are under siege from more or less the same quarters and for the same reasons.
Just as the people who object to the ringing of the Angelus are the lapsed Catholics who cannot bear to be reminded of what they have endeavoured to discard, the objectors to Articles 2 and 3 are what might be called the lapsed nationalists.
To show we respect Protestantism, they tell us, we must abandon Catholicism; to respect unionism, we must abandon Irish nationalism. It never seems to occur to them that this approach might actually make unionists and Protestants far more wary of having any truck with us. For of what value is our “tolerance” and “pluralism” if we have such little respect for our own rights and beliefs?
— John Waters.
A north-south body with executive powers (the term Council of Ireland has been studiously avoided) is now being put forward again as the mechanism which will secure nationalist consent to an internal arrangement within Northern Ireland.
— Donnacha Vaughan, the Sunday Business Post, March 22, 1998.
Northern Ireland, it seems, is to remain an integral part of the United Kingdom, in line with unionist demands and against the wishes of nationalists, north and south.
— Donnacha Vaughan.
In any terrorist (or insurgent) campaign that reaches equilibrium, the security forces vastly outnumber their adversaries. The key to success is not static defence, but intelligence that enables the security forces to take the initiative and keep the terrorists off balance.
— US Ambassador in London, Raymond Seitz, in a report to the US State Department in January 1992, quoted in the Irish News, March 23, 1998.
It was put to Mr Adams – if there was a change in the way a northern assembly operated including its role, remit, makeup and balance – would it be possible that Sinn Féin could alter its own constitution and participate in such a body?
Mr Adams said: “Well, the party has no plans to do that. The onus has to be on those who favour such a proposition to convince us of the validity of that approach.”
— Irish News, March 25, 1998. Shades of Adams’ position on Leinster House pre-1986 . . .
The Irish Penal Reform Trust calls for the immediate closure of the women’s wing of Limerick prison. It is an affront to a civilised society that individuals, many of whom are already damaged, should be so poorly served while in the custody of the State.
—Dr Ian O’Donnell, Director, Irish Penal Reform Trust, in a letter to the Irish Times, March 26, 1998.
Assassination by proxy.
— Sunday Telegraph, March 29, 1998, describing the activities of British military intelligence in directing and controlling the killings of nationalists by loyalist death squads in recent years.
Mr Currie warned against the “rabbit theory of politics” in the North, which put forward the view that a solution would emerge because one side would eventually outbreed the other. “It is an extremely dangerous concept and a greater recipe for instability and continuing trouble could not be imagined,” he added.
— Austin Currie, Fine Gael Leinster House TD, quoted in the Irish Times, April 1, 1998.
Contents
