Our family made this pilgrimage to pay our respects to those who have died fighting for an Irish republic, united under one flag and free of all colonialist rule from the parliament at Westminster.
Visiting these Republican graves, and in particular those of Bobby Sands and the hunger strikers, mean sufficient to us that we’ve travelled 12,000 miles to do so.
Thanks again to Joe Carolan, I am reminded of the words of Patrick Pearse’s speech at the graveside of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa on 1 August 1915. O’Donovan Rossa was a founding member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (popularly known as the Fenians), who had died in New York on 29 June 1915, aged 84.
On learning of O’Donovan Rossa’s death, Fenian leader, John Devoy, cabled Tom Clarke in Dublin to ask what should be done and Clarke replied, ‘Send his body home at once.’ Clarke chose Patrick Pearse, a barrister and schoolteacher who was known as the foremost orator of the time, to give the graveside oration. At that time republican leaders were refraining from making inflammatory speeches for fear of imprisonment at a crucial time in the preparations for a rising but when Pearse asked how far he should go, Clarke answered, ‘Make it hot as hell, throw discretion to the winds.’
Pearse did just that and his oration roused republican feeling and significant support for the Rising of 1916. In his oration he said ‘They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! – they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.’
So very, very true.
Milltown Cemetery (Irish: Reilig Bhaile an Mhuilinn) is a large cemetery in west Belfast, Northern Ireland. It lies within the townland of Ballymurphy, between Falls Road and the M1 motorway.
Milltown Cemetery opened in 1869 and there are now approximately 200,000 of Belfast’s citizens buried there, most of whom are Irish Catholic.
Within the cemetery there are three large sections of open space, each about the size of a football field, designated as ‘poor ground’ where 80,000 people are buried, many of whom died in the flu pandemic of 1919. Since 2007, the 55-acre (220,000 m2) cemetery has undergone extensive work, reversing years of neglect.
Milltown Cemetery has become synonymous with Irish republicanism with IRA volunteer Bobby Sands, who died on hunger strike on 5 May 1981, buried here alongside fellow hunger-strikers, Kieran Doherty, Joe McDonnell and Pat McGeown who died a number of years later from ill-health brought about by the hunger strike. In total, 77 IRA volunteers are buried in what is known as the ‘New Republican Plot’, a further 34 volunteers are buried in what is known as the County Antrim Memorial Plot which was used between 1969 and 1972.Throughout the cemetery many more IRA volunteers are buried in family graves. These include Tom Williams, who was executed in Crumlin Road Prison on 2 September 1942 and whose body lay in a prison grave until January 2000 when a campaign by the National Graves Association, Belfast, to have his remains re-interred in Milltown was successful.
Members of the INLA and Workers’ Party are also buried there.
Milltown was the scene of the Milltown Cemetery attack on 16 March 1988, when loyalist paramilitary Michael Stone attacked a funeral, killing three mourners as IRA volunteers Dan McCann, Seán Savage and Mairéad Farrell, were being buried. All three were killed by members of the SAS at Gibraltar during Operation Flavius.
Listed below are a number of graves which are of interest:
Harbinson Plot
William Harbinson died while interned in Belfast Prison and was buried at Portmore, Ballinderry. A Celtic cross was erected to his memory and that of other republicans who were imprisoned in County Antrim jails in 1912. This plot also contains the remains of 5 IRA volunteers: Joe McKelvey, Liam Mellows, Dick Barrett, and Rory O’Connor were captured when Free State forces attacked the Four Courts in Dublin. Without charge or trial, on 8 December 1922, they were executed by firing squad. In 1924, McKelvey was re-interred in Milltown Sean McCartney was shot dead by British Forces while engaging in paramilitary activities on 8 May 1921 in the Lappinduff Mountains, County Cavan. He was a member of a Belfast Flying Column which operated there. Terence Perry, in 1939, as part of the IRA’s Expeditionary Force, volunteered for paramilitary activities in England. Captured, he was imprisoned in Parkhurst Prison, where he died on 7 July 1942. Sean Gaffney, an IRA volunteer was imprisoned on the prison ship HMS Al Rawdah, moored at Strangford Lough. On 18 November 1940, he died while still in prison. Seamus ‘Rocky’ Burns, while interned, escaped from Derry jail. He was in Belfast when he was shot by RUC personnel in Castle Street. He died on 12 February 1944.
County Antrim Memorial Plot
Unveiled on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, the plot honours the county’s republican dead. 34 IRA volunteers who died while involved in paramilitary activity during the late 1960s and early 1970s are buried there.
New Republican Plot
In 1972, the National Graves Association purchased the ground which would become the New Republican Plot and the first burials here took place in July of that year. This plot contains the remains of 77 IRA Volunteers who have died while engaging in paramilitary activities or as a result of imprisonment or assassination, not only in Belfast but those killed as far away as Gibraltar along with those volunteers, including Bobby Sands, who died as a result of hunger striking.
Winifred Carney Grave
Winifred Carney, a lifelong socialist who died on 21 November 1943, was a member of the Irish Citizen Army and Cumann na mBan. She was a comrade and secretary to Commandant James Connolly. Winifred was a combatant during the 1916 Easter Rising and was the last woman to leave the G.P.OINL.A Plot The INLA Plot contains the remains of ten members of the Irish National Liberation Army.
In addition the graves of the following comrades can also be found in the Milltown Cemetery: Sean McCaughey, Giuseppe Conlon, Gerard Dillon. Cathal O’Byrne.
Military War Graves
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintain and register the graves within the cemetery of British Commonwealth service personnel, covering years 1914–1921 and 1939–1947. There are 102 of World War I and 52 of World War II, besides 10 foreign national servicemen. Focal point is a Cross of Sacrifice erected by the Commission after the first war, near which stands a Screen Wall memorial listing those of that war whose graves could not be individually marked.
In the mid 1990’s I wrote a solo play entitled ‘Skylark Sing Your Lonely Song’ based on the life of Bobby Sands and it was the research for this that enabled me to feel such an affinity for him and intense loyalty to his memory.
dykiegirl 