(Picture) Fianna Éireann colour party leads the march from the Seán Keenan memorial to the Bloody Sunday monument in Derry on March 3.

(Picture) Pádraig Barton, grandson of Seán Keenan, lays flowers on the memorial on behalf of the family.

(Picture) Seán Keenan

THE ninth anniversary of the death of veteran Republican Seán Keenan of Derry was marked by a ceremony at the memorial in his honour in Derry’s Bogside on Sunday, March 3. A crowd of more than 100 attended, including many young people.

Jimmy McElhinney laid a wreath on behalf of the Leadership of the Republican Movement and Pat Barry read the Easter 1916 Proclamation. Fergus McCabe said a decade of the Rosary as Gaeilge.

(Picture) Joe O’Neill lays a wreath at the Bloody Sunday monument.

(Picture) Gerald Crilly

Gerald Crilly, of Meigh, south Armagh gave the oration and spoke of Seán Keenan’s long periods of internment without trial throughout many decades. At times his wife Nancy and sons were also interned. Seán Keenan often reckoned he spent a total of 14 years in prison and never stood in a British court in his life.

Seán Keenan was an inspirational figure in the Republican Movement in Derry, throughout Ireland, in Europe and the United States where he travelled to further the cause of Irish freedom.  He played a leading role also in the Civil Rights movement and Conradh na Gaeilge in his native city.
 
Gerald Crilly reminded those in attendance that Seán Keenan often said that Republicans should always “follow the ideals, not the man” and his words should never be forgotten if the ending of British rule was to be achieved.

The memory of Seán Keenan and republicans like him will give us strength in the months and years of struggle ahead, he concluded.  At the conclusion of the oration Whitey O’Neill played Amhrán na bhFiann on the violin.

After the ceremony at the direction of Republican Sinn Féin’s national treasurer, Joe O’ Neill, the crowd formed up behind a Fianna Éireann colour party and marched to the Bloody Sunday Martyrs memorial in there another wreath was placed.

Joe O’Neill said they were doing what Seán Keenan would have wanted to do: They had not and were not going to ask the British forces or anyone else for permission to march through the streets of Derry.

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Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom March 11, 2002  Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie.