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Comrades, we stand here today to remember and commemorate those who
gave their lives in the struggle for National Liberation and socialism from
this North West corner of the six counties. It is poignant moment for
those of us who knew those buried hear and in Strabane, in Belaghy and
Maghara,in Belfast and any other area of Ireland where working people
young and old said enough. Where young men and women willingly gave
their lives that we all might see a "new dawn of freedom" for our nation
and it's people. The people represented and commiserated here, by this
statue were a different breed from stereotypical republicans. They were
out not to buy loads of green paint and submit willingly to the
freestate idea of a Church dominated Ireland were we served the
interests of the few and subjugated Ireland's most precious resource,
it's people for buttons to foreign firms while never building an
economic base for the Irish people and the future.
These were never the ideals of Patsy O Hara, "Big Red" Mickey Devine, Neil Mc Monigal or Mickey Montgomery. They were not the ideals of Dominic and Mary McGlinchey, Paul Mc Cann or Gino Gallegher. These men and women were truly from a different breed. Through out our nations history armies have fought in Ireland for a myriad of reasons. To keep out the Norman's, For the Gold of an English king, for religion, for dual monarchy, for money for anything other than the good of the Irish people. These men and women were different. They were out to set our people free. A freedom that includes freedom from exploitation by foreign employers who rape our workers, freedom from a meddling church and it's secular flunkies, freedom from the prostitution of our Island and it's children by the aggressors of NATO. They died that we might never again be the tools of a foreign power. They died that our nation might live and stand as a nation. We who are left can do no more for them than place this moodiest stone here in their memory. What they can do for us is more, from this grave and all the other patriot graves that Ireland holds flows the link that says, one day we will be free. The Irish people are coming to know just who has filled their spare rooms and garages with cheap green paint. Our people know who are selling their birth right for non union factories and plants, they know that the old order is still their in all it's sectarian glory. They know the smell of penny roles and hairy bacon when it's on the air and they are slowly coming to terms with these facts. When they do that will be the New Dawn of freedom for us all. The Irish, not protestants, not catholics, not deserters, the Irish. This is the gift these comrades have left us. Only we can squander it. Let us resolve hear to day to pick up the torch and to carry on with it until that day.
Terry O hEarcain |