(Grma to Irish Republican and Marxist History Project for the invitation to sing, the recording and the Youtube posting).
The song is Be Moderate (also known as”We Only the Want the Earth”) by James Connolly from the James Connolly Song Book, edited by Connolly and published in New York in 1907. No air or tune was indicated in that publication and it has been sung to a number of airs over the years. It’s a wonderful song in my opinion.
I sing it to the air of a “A Nation Once Again” composed by Thomas Davis in the 1840s, which I think suits it and supplies a chorus for others to join in. I first heard it sung to that air many years ago in London by a group of musicians and singers including Cornelius Cardew, of the CPE (m-l) (who was killed by a hit-and-run driver in an incident without any witnesses). He is here singing it with a ska back-beat(!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTxVBsg4u30
In my rendition here there is an adaptation and an error. The adaptation is my singing “workers” instead of “Labour” so as to distance the revolutionary content from the social democratic collaboration with capitalism, as illustrated by the unfortunate evolution of the party of that name founded by Connolly. My error is in the verse beginning “The Labour fakir …” in which I say “….. teaches” in two different lines.
I should have sung the lines thus: The Labour fakir full of guile false doctrine ever teaches
and whilst he bleeds the rank and file, tame moderation preaches;
Yet in his despite we’ll see the day, when with swords in their girths,
workers shall march in war array to claim their own, the Earth!
On April 20th 1914, Colorado National Guardsmen and mining company guards opened fire on a striking coal miners’ camp, with rifles and machine gun, killing up to 26 people, including women and children. They had set fire to the camp before opening fire and some of the casualties died of smoke inhalation.
The event and the response of the workers were the inspiration for the songThe Ludlow Massacre, composed by Woody Guthrie, the socialist troubadour from Oklahoma, around 30 years later. Here in Ireland it was recorded by Christy Moore in 1971 on the Prosperous album and it has long been a favourite of mine (I’ll be singing it as part of the selection for Songs of Struggle 1913-1923, part of the 1916 Festival at Liberty Hall on Saturday 26th April 2014).
Colorado Strikers and families in front of tent town
The massacre took place during the great Southern Colorado Coal Strike which began in September 1913, a month after the strike of the IT&GWU tram workers began the eight month-long Dublin Lockout. But the Southern Colorado Strike lasted until December 1914 – sixteen months. And, in common with many industrial struggles in the USA, it was very violent.
The chief antagonists in this strike were the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co., of which John D. Rockefeller was the main owner; the Rocky Mountain Fuel Co. and the Victor-American Fuel Co. As events were to show, the mine-owners could also draw on the armed force of the state of Colorado, as well as on their own hired gunmen.
Opposing them was the United Mineworkers of America trade union. The UMA presented seven demands:
Recognition of the union as bargaining agent
An increase in tonnage rates (equivalent to a 10% wage increase)
Enforcement of the eight-hour work day law
Payment for “dead work” (laying track, timbering, handling impurities, etc.)
Weight-checkmen elected by the workers (to keep company weightmen honest)
The right to use any store, and choose their boarding houses and doctors
Strict enforcement of Colorado’s laws (such as mine safety rules, abolition of subs), and an end to the company guard system
The employers rejected the demands and prepared to bring in scab labour.
Living in company houses
As in a number of other countries, many mineworkers rented rooms or houses in company “towns” served by company shops, from which the miners also had to buy their equipment. Apart from that, they were also overcharged, so that often at the end of the week’s work the deductions left little pay to collect. This is the meaning behind the song Sixteen Tons (by either Merle Travis in 1946 or by George S. Davis in the 1930s — the origin is disputed):
You shift sixteen tons and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter don’t you call me ‘cos I can’t come —
I owe my soul to the company store.”
Living in company houses often meant eviction when workers struck work, as happened in Dublin in 1913 to a number of strikers, including those of the Merchant Co. in Merchant Street, near North Wall.
The evicted miners in Colorado set up a tent town of 1,200 people which was being harassed by company guards and then, when the workers resisted, by Colorado state’s National Guard. Pot-shots were taken at the camp and stragglers were beaten up; eventually strike leaders were assassinated.
On April 20th 1914, about eight months into the strike, the Colorado National Guard and company guards set fire to tents and as people scrambled around, opened fire on the camp. Some workers claimed a loss of life of 26 while others numbered it at 19; the lack of municipal or government recording meant that there were no “official” counts of the dead.
Officers of the Colorado National Guard
After the massacre — the workers’ response
In the aftermath of the massacre the workers armed themselves (union officials were seen openly handing out weapons) and fought back over a 40-mile front, from the town of Trinidad to Walsenburg (both of which are mentioned in the song). The death toll is recorded as between 69 and 199. The lack of municipal or government recording has already been mentioned; biased newspaper reporting was another problem and these two factors probably accounted for most of the discrepancies in accounting for the workers’ dead.
The UMA eventually lost the strike but the union survived that defeat and went on to fight and win other victories; in addition Congressional investigations into the events did result in improvement in miners’ conditions, the enforcement of the eight-hour day and legislation limiting employment of child labour. Today the Ludlow tent colony site is a USA National Historic Landmark and the area is owned by the UMA.
The lessons
The strike showed the ferocity of the US mine-owners in defence of their high profits as well as the readiness of municipal and government authorities in a prosperous democracy to collude with them — in the case of Colorado State, most actively and murderously. Also apparent was the heroism and solidarity of the workers in that long strike and the readiness of at least many of them to meet the capitalists’ violence with their own and to sacrifice their lives if necessary.
Like the Dublin Lockout, which was also a defeat for the ITG&WU, the Southern Colorado Coal Strike showed the necessity for workers and their organisations on occasion to fight losing battles. Apart from it not being possible at the outset to predict the outcome of all struggles, hard fights teach lessons and steel the class in its battles. If workers were to avoid all battles except those they were certain to win, they would fight very few, become weak and lose the ability to fight, to say nothing of carrying out a successful revolution.
A hundred years ago, the mineworkers in the Southern Colorado coalfields and their families wrote a great chapter in the history of workers’ struggles, even if a lot of the blood in which it was written was their own.
The Ludlow Massacre Monument, erected by the union 1916Woody Guthrie, socialist troubadour, composed the Ludlow Massacre song about 1944.
The Ludlow Massacre by Woody Guthrie
(The lyrics accuse “they” sometimes and “you” at others; I sing “they” or “their” all through, along with a few other minor changes)
It was early springtime that the strike was on
They moved us miners out of doors
Out from the houses that the company owned
We moved into tents at old Ludlow
I was worried bad about my children
Soldiers guarding the railroad bridge
Every once in a while a bullet would fly
Kick up gravel under my feet
We were so afraid they would kill our children
We dug us a cave that was seven foot deep
Carried our young ones and a pregnant woman
Down inside the cave to sleep
That very night the soldiers waited
Until us miners were asleep
They snuck around our little tent town
Soaked our tents with your kerosene
They struck a match and the blaze it started
They pulled the triggers of their Gatling guns
I made a run for the children but the fire wall stopped me
Thirteen children died from their guns
I carried my blanket to a wire fence corner
Watched the fire till the blaze died down
I helped some people grab their belongings
While their bullets killed us all around
I will never forget the looks on the faces
Of the men and women that awful day
When we stood around to preach their funerals
And lay the corpses of the dead away
We told the Colorado Governor to call the President
Tell him to call off his National Guard
But the National Guard belong to the Governor
So he didn’t try so very hard
Our women from Trinidad they hauled some potatoes
Up to Walsenburg in a little cart
They sold their potatoes and brought some guns back
And put a gun in every hand
The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corner
They did not know that we had these guns
And the red neck miners mowed down them troopers
You should have seen those poor boys run
We took some cement and walled that cave up
Where those thirteen children died
I said, “God bless the Mine Workers’ Union”
And then I hung my head and cried.
Republican French soldiers landing near Killalla 1798 (artist unknown).
CAPTAIN BARTHOLOMEW TEELING (1774-1798)
Teeling is mostly remembered for being an envoy of the United Irishmen to revolutionary France, later landing with Humbert’s expeditionary force in Mayo and for an amazing act during the battle of Collooney. He was captured after the defeat of the revolutionary forces at Ballinamuck, after which most of the French were treated as prisoners of war but the Irish were either slaughtered or taken prisoner for trial on charges of treason. Teeling was tried and sentenced to death; he was hanged at Arbour Hill on 24th September 1798 and faced death, as he had lived, like a hero.
Teeling monument at Carrignagat, Co. Sligo
In 1898, the centenary year of the uprising and a year of many commemorations, statues, plaques and the writing of songs, a statue of Teeling was erected in Carricknagat. One of Sligo Town’s main streets, in which stand perhaps ironically the Sligo Courthouse and main police station, was also later named Teeling Street in his honour.
Bartholomew Teeling, a son of Luke Teeling, a Catholic linen merchant who lived in Chapel Hill, Lisburn, was educated at the Dubordieu School in Lisburn and at Trinity College Dublin. His younger brother Charles Teeling (1778–1850) went on to be a writer.
In 1796 Bartholomew enlisted in the United Irishmen and travelled to France to encourage support for a French invasion of Ireland.
The United Irishmen Directorate had intended to lead an armed insurrection with the support of a French landing. France had a republican government, having had its own republican rising in 1789, during which the French King and Queen and many aristocrats had been executed. A French fleet consisting of 43 ships carrying 15,000 troops including Theobald Wolfe Tone had set sail for Ireland in December 1796. The fleet had divided into smaller groups to avoid interception by the Royal Navy and were to reform at Bantry Bay. Most did so but several ships, including the flagship Fraternité carrying General Hoche, leader of the expedition, were delayed; bad weather then set in and, combined with a lack of leadership, to the frustration and fury of Wolfe Tone, who commented that they were so close they “could have tossed a biscuit” ashore, the decision was made to return to France.
BLIAIN NA BHFRANCACH/ THE YEAR OF THE FRENCH
In August, when the other uprisings in Ireland had been suppressed or were stalling, another French landing to assist the Irish rebellion finally took place in Mayo but it was a much smaller one. On the 22nd August 1798, almost 1,100 troops under the command of General Humbert landed at Cill Chuimín Strand, Bádh Cill Ala (Killala Bay), Co. Mayo. The numbers were too few to counter those being massed by the British and some of the other centres of the uprising had already been defeated or were hard-pressed and blocked; still, Humbert hoped for enough Irish to join and to raise other areas in insurrection.
French soldiers fire muskets at British troops (re-enactment in Mayo).
The remote location allowed a landing away from the tens of thousands of British soldiers concentrated in the east in Leinster, engaged in mopping-up operations against remaining pockets of rebels in the province. The nearby Mayo town of Cill Ala was quickly captured after a brief resistance by local yeomen and two days later, Béal an Átha (Ballina) was taken too, following the defeat of a force of cavalry sent from the town against the French. Irish volunteers began to come into the French camp from all over Mayo following the news of the French landing. A victory over General Lake’s 6,000 at Castlebar followed, by which time General Humbert had gained 5,000 Irish recruits.
Print depicting battle of Killalla
“Killala was ours at midnight and high over Ballina town Our banners in triumph were waving before the next sun had gone down. We gathered to speed the good news boys, we gathered from near and afar And history can tell how we routed the redcoats from old Castlebar.” (Men of the West, by William Rooney).
“Seo sláinte muintir an Iarthair daoibh, a chruinnigh le cúnamh san áir;
mar sheas siad in aimsir an ghéar-chaill — seo sláinte fear Chonnacht’ go brách!”
(Chorus Fir an Iarthair, Gaeilge translation of the same song by [researching at present]……..)
Mocking print depicting short battle at Castlebar, dubbed “the Castlebar Races” due to the speed of the British forces’ retreat.
But meanwhile a British army of some 26,000 men was assembled under Field Marshall Lord Cornwallis, who had just been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (i.e. the British Queen’s representative) and was steadily moving towards the insurrectionist forces.
Abandoning Castlebar (where the victorious French held a ball to draw in the locals “of substance”), Humbert moved towards Ulster via Sligo hoping to link up with United Irishmen there, although the United Irishmen in Antrim had been beaten in a number of battles, the last one being at Ballynahinch on June 12th.
Plaque recording General Humbert holding a ball after the Castlebar victory
ONE MAN AGAINST MUSKETS AND CANNON
The combined Franco-Irish forces marched north-eastwards towards Sligo on their way to County Donegal in Ulster. On 5th September 1798 their progress was blocked by a unit of British troops from the garrison in Sligo, from approximately five miles to the north of Collooney. The British had installed a cannon above Union Rock at Carricknagat, a small townland to the immediate north of Collooney (hence the alternate name for the battle: the Battle of Carricknagat). The cannon was protected by a screen of infantry including a sharpshooter by the cannon itself. Charging the cannon would mean the death of many by cannon shot and by musket fire. On the other hand, a detour would cost valuable time with large British forces following behind.
Suddenly Bartholomew Teeling broke from the Franco-Irish forces and charged forward on his horse. One may imagine the scene: the British at first watch incredulously, then a scattered fire of muskets. Teeling is unharmed, galloping onwards. The British sharpshooter by the cannon coolly takes aim. Teeling eyes him and suddenly swerves his horse; the shot goes past him. The sharpshooter curses and reloads. Another ragged volley from the infantry and again they miss.
The French and the Irish are cheering but they can’t believe he will make it. Teeling’s horse leaps a ditch and gallops on past the infantry, foam flying from the animal’s body – the sharpshooter looks up at him, loses his nerve and fumbles the charging of his musket …. Teeling is up at the gun, he has drawn his pistol and shoots the sharpshooter dead. He draws another pistol and shoots the gunner. The Irish and French are ecstatic and charge forward. The British are stunned; some stand but most of the British infantry flee from the superior numbers and leave the cannon in the hands of the insurrectionist forces, as well as 60 dead and 100 taken prisoner.
Strangely, Colonel Charles Vereker, who commanded the Limerick militia in the stand-off, was awarded a peerage for his role in the battle.
NEW HOPE – AND DEFEAT
Hearing of a renewed United Irish offensive with risings in Westmeath and Longford, and perhaps with hopes of gathering support for a march on Dublin, Humbert turned and crossed the Shannon at Baile an Trá (Ballintra) on 7th September, stopping at Cloone that evening. He was halfway between where he had originally landed and Dublin. But that evening some survivors reached his camp to tell of the defeats of the insurgents at Wilson’s Hospital and at Granard.
Cornwallis was blocking the road to Dublin with a huge army and General Lake, smarting from his defeat at Castlebar, was expected with his forces soon. In addition, Humbert’s rearguard was being constantly harassed and due to sabotage they had lost two cannon.
Humbert knew he was finished but felt military honour obliged him to make some kind of a stand, which he did at Ballinamuck, on the borders of the counties Longford and Leitrim. About half an hour into the battle, Humbert signalled his surrender. The British gave the French prisoner-of-war status but there was no such thing for “rebels”. The 1,000 or so Irish forces and Teeling, perhaps knowing their fate, held on to their weapons but they were charged by British infantry and then dragoons; as they broke, they were hunted down.
Soon the bodies of about 500 Irish lay dead on the field and 200 prisoners were taken in mopping-up operations; almost all were later hanged, including Matthew Tone, brother of Wolfe Tone. Most of the prisoners were marched to Carrick-on-Shannon, St. Johnstown (Ballinalee today), where they were executed in what is known locally as Bully’s Acre (there is also a Bully’s Acre in Dublin, part of the Royal Hospital of Kilmainham grounds, across the Liffey and a little to the west from Croppies’ Acre and Arbour Hill). For some reason, Teeling and Matthew Tone were taken to Dublin.
The Monument in Ballina, Mayo
Humbert and his men were also taken to Dublin, by canal, to be sent back to France. The British army then slowly spread out into the “Republic of Connacht” in a campaign of atrocities and destruction. Many more were hunted down and hanged.
The catastrophe at Ballinamuck made a strong impression on social memory and was strongly represented in local folklore. Numerous statements in the oral tradition were later collected about this event, most of them in the 1930s by the historian Richard Hayes and by the Irish Folklore Commission.
“PERSEVERE, MY BELOVED COUNTRYMEN. YOUR CAUSE IS THE CAUSE OF TRUTH. IT MUST AND WILL ULTIMATELY TRIUMPH.”
As Ireland was under martial law after the uprising, Bartholomew Teeling was tried by court-martial as an Irish rebel, the charge being treason for which the sentence was death. He was identified to the British by William Coulson, a damask manufacturer from Teeling’s home town of Lisburn. Although Teeling had the rank of Captain in the French Army, to the British he was a British subject engaged in treason and Humbert was unsuccessful in his attempt to have Teeling treated as a French officer. The condemned man was hanged at Arbour Hill Prison in Dublin (no longer in existence but the graveyard/ and 1916 memorial is still there), in his French uniform adorned with an Irish tricolour in his hat.
“Neither the intimation of his fate, nor the near approach of it, produced on him any diminution of courage. With firm step and unchanged countenance he walked from the Prevot to the place of execution, and conversed with an unaffected ease while the dreadful apparatus was preparing.” (330. United Irishmen, their Lives and Times: Third Series: Robert R. Madden, M.D. 3 vols. Dublin, 1846).
Portrait of Bartholomew Teeling
Teeling attempted to read the following statement from the scaffold, but was not permitted to: “Fellow-citizens, I have been condemned by a military tribunal to suffer what they call an ignominious death, but what appears, from the number of its illustrious victims, to be glorious in the highest degree. It is not in the power of men to abase virtue nor the man who dies for it. His death must be glorious in the field of battle or on the scaffold.
“The same Tribunal which has condemned me — Citizens, I do not speak to you here of the constitutional right of such a Tribunal — has stamped me a traitor. If to have been active in endeavouring to put a stop to the blood-thirsty policy of an oppressive Government has been treason, I am guilty. If to have endeavoured to give my native country a place among the nations of the earth was treason, then I am guilty indeed. If to have been active in endeavouring to remove the fangs of oppression from the head of the devoted Irish peasant was treason, I am guilty.
“Finally, if to have striven to make my fellow-men love each other was guilt, then I am guilty. You, my countrymen, may perhaps one day be able to tell whether these were the acts of a traitor or deserved death. My own heart tells me they were not and, conscious of my innocence, I would not change my present situation for that of the highest of my enemies.
“Fellow-citizens, I leave you with the heartfelt satisfaction of having kept my oath as a United Irishman, and also with the glorious prospect of the success of the cause in which we have been engaged. Persevere, my beloved countrymen. Your cause is the cause of Truth. It must and will ultimately triumph.”
It is the very least we can do to honour the memory of this great man, cut down by oppression at 24 years of age in what would surely have been a life full of achievements, to ensure that where he and many comrades are buried, Croppies’ Acre, is maintained in an appropriate manner and open to visitors, from Ireland and from abroad.
POSTSCRIPT:
In 1800 the Irish Parliament, which was open to Anglican Protestants (Church of Ireland) only, had met in the current Bank of Ireland building at College Green) agreed to the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland and voted itself out of existence through Crown bribery and fear.
Painted portrait of Field Marshall Lord Cornwallis, leader of the forces suppressing the uprising, also Lord Lieutenant of Ireland during the period
Cornwallis was later to surrender to a combined American and French force in 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown, which ended the American War of Independence in defeat for Britain.
After many adventures, Humbert settled in New Orleans, where he was once again to fight the British at the Battle of New Orleans in the 1812 War.
“Agus gairim na Franncaigh breá láidre, do tháinig le Humbert anall, Mar thug siad dúinn croí agus misneach nuair a bhíomar go brónach sa ngabháil.”
General Lake was to have a successful imperial military career with Britain; he was also made an Irish MP (as well as being an MP in England) in the run-up to the vote for the Act of Union 1800 which abolished the Irish Parliament and made Ireland part of the United Kingdom.
Three unarmed Irish Republican Army (IRA) Volunteers were shot dead by undercover members of the Special Air Service (SAS) in Gibraltar. The three were Mairéad Farrell, Sean Savage and Daniel Mc Cann.
The episode sparked intense controversy and began a chain of events that lead to a series of deaths in the Six Counties.
The British government claimed that the SAS shot the IRA members because they thought a bomb was about to be detonated. Eyewitnesses said that those shot were given no warning.British Intelligence and some media tried to discredit one of the witnesses, Carmen Proeta, whose flat overlooked the murder scene and who came forward to say what she had seen. A British newspaper claimed that she was a prostitute running an escort agency and later had to pay her damages in a libel case.
An undercover unit of the Spanish Guardia Civil in the Spanish state had been shadowing the three Volunteers in cooperation with British Intelligence but had lost them just before the border. They were reported unhappy with the unexpected executions carried out by the British death squad. However, it is also true that the Gibraltar killings were carried out less than a year after the last operation of the GAL death-squads (1983-1987), run by the Spanish state with senior Guardia Civil officers and the Minister of the Interior against Basque pro-independence activists.
Tuesday 8 March 1988A car believed to belong to those killed in Gibraltar was found in Marbella and was discovered to contain 140 pounds of high explosives.Wednesday 16 March 1988During the funerals of the three Volunteers at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast a Loyalist gunman, Michael Stone, launched a grenade and gun attack on mourners. Three people were killed and 50 injured. The whole episode was recorded by television news cameras. The police and the army had withdrawn to avoid any confrontation with the mourners. Stone was chased to a nearby motorway were he was attacked by a number of mourners. The police arrived in time to save his life. The main Loyalist paramilitary groups denied any involvement with Stone. One of those killed, Kevin Brady, was a member of the IRA; though unarmed, he had been filmed, along with some others, moving TOWARDS Stone as the Loyalist attacked.
Saturday 19 March 1988
During the funeral of Kevin Brady, killed at Milltown Cemetery (16 March 1988), a car approached the funeral procession at high speed. It was claimed by some present that they feared another attack by Loyalist gunmen. The car’s passage was blocked and a group of the mourners attacked the two passengers, killing them. They were two soldiers in plain clothes and their purpose was never adequately explained.
28 April 1988
Thames Television, as part of the ITV television current affairs series “This Week”, screened a documentary about the killings called “Death on the Rock”. The documentary examined the deaths of three Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) members in Gibraltar on 6 March 1988 at the hands of British special forces (codenamed “Operation Flavius”).
The documentary presented evidence that the British government’s version of events was inaccurate and that the three IRA members had been shot without warning or while attempting to surrender, for which it was extensively criticised. The programme was condemned by the Government—who had attempted to have the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) postpone its broadcast—while tabloid newspapers accused it of sensationalism and “trial by television”.
Over the following weeks, several newspapers attempted to undermine the documentary by attacking its witnesses or presenting its findings as distorted or inaccurate. After one of the documentary’s witnesses retracted his evidence at the inquest into the shootings, Thames Television commissioned an independent inquiry into the making of “Death on the Rock”—the first such inquiry into a single television programme—headed by Lord Windlesham and Richard Rampton, QC. The Windlesham-Rampton report largely vindicated “Death on the Rock”, and found, with two exceptions, that it had accurately portrayed the evidence of its witnesses.
Thames lost its franchise and the IBA was abolished as a result of the Broadcasting Act 1990, decisions which many people believed were influenced by the Government’s anger at “Death on the Rock”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_on_the_Rock
September 1995
The European Court of Human Rights found the British government guilty of violating Article Two of the European Convention, which protects a person’s right to life. In the first decision of its kind against a government, the court stated that the British had failed to uphold “the standard expected of a democratic government” when they shot dead three IRA Volunteers in Gibraltar in 1988.
GIBRALTAR THREE SONG
(Air: Glencoe Massacre)
Chorus:
Sad are three homes in Belfast now —
All Ireland shares their sorrow;
Mairéad Farrell, Sean Savage, and Daniel McCann …
They died on the streets of Gibraltar
I
They flew out of Belfast with an ambitious plan
To continue the struggle to free Ireland;
Mairéad Farrell, Sean Savage, and Daniel McCann:
They died on the streets of Gibraltar
Chorus:
Sad are three homes in Belfast now —
Old Ireland shares their sorrow;
As they walked in the sun, the Brits drew their guns
And blood stained the streets of Gibraltar
II
The SAS stood there so proud of their deed
Three more freedom fighters lay dead in the street
They’ve been given no warning no chance to retreat
For three had to die in Gibraltar
(Chorus)
III
Each of them unarmed, without mercy gunned down,
Shot again in the head as they lay on the ground,
By the Special Air Service, assassins of the Crown,
They were murdered on the streets of Gibraltar.
(Chorus)
This song, slightly different version to the one I have, was written I think by the Irish Brigade. The 3rd verse above is mine entirely, written over a decade ago while I was still living in London.
There are also a couple of other songs about the events and Roger Bolton, the TV documentary maker, wrote a book “Death on the Rock and other stories”. The track of one of the other songs, Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep, written by I think Catherine Jenkins, is on this video which has extracts from an interview with Mairéad Farrell http://youtu.be/xZUeCemzkt4
end
SEAN SAVAGE
28 JANUARY 1985 – 6 MARCH 1988
Was studying for his ‘A’-levels when imprisoned on remand in 1982 on the word of an informer who subsequently retracted. He joined the IRA when he was seventeen years old.
MAIRÉAD FARRELL
3 MARCH 1957 – 6 MARCH 1988
Imprisoned in 1976. She took part in the 1980 hunger strike. She was Officer Commanding of Republican prisoners in Armagh prison throughout the 1981 hunger strike and was very well liked and highly respected by the female POWs. Released in 1986, she campaigned actively against strip-searching and returned to IRA duty.
DAN McCANN
30 NOVEMBER 1957 – 6 MARCH 1988
First imprisoned in 1973 and on three subsequent occasions. From 1979-1981 he was in prison ‘on the blanket’ during the campaign for political status. He had been the target of British Army death threats and survived a loyalist assassination attempt.
rebelbreeze 