15 November 2007 Edition

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'Bring the Manchester Martyrs home'

John Desmond

John Desmond

AS PART of his campaign to have the remains of the Manchester Martyrs returned to Ireland, John Desmond, the Sinn Féin Mayor of Bandon in County Cork addressed a meeting in Gort na Mona GAC, West Belfast, last Friday, 9 November.
William Allen, Michael O’Brien and Michael Larkin were hanged in the New Bailey Prison in Salford, near Manchester, on 23 November 1867, for killing a policeman during a prison break.
John Desmond outlined in his address how he is fighting, through the British courts, to open up grave 2711 in Blackley Cemetery, where the Fenians were reinterred with 57 other hanged prisoners exhumed from Manchester’s Strangeways Prison.
Over the next two weekends, a series of events to mark the 140th anniversary of the Manchester Martyrs will take place in Bandon, County Cork, and Manchester.
Friday, 16 November, sees the beginning of a weekend of commemorative events in Cork, including a commemoration march on Sunday, 18 November.
The following weekend, on Saturday, 24 November, there is a major history conference in the Working-Class Movement Library in Salford entitled The Bold Fenian Men.

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