Francis Hughes and James Connolly – Guerrilla fighters who faced a mighty enemy

FRANCIS HUGHES AND JAMES CONNOLLY were both killed by British imperialism and while their deaths occurred 65 years apart they are linked by history, political motivation and courage. Staring death in the face, their defiance in the cause of freedom for their country and their class marked them out as true revolutionaries.

So it was good to be in Francis Hughes's home town of Bellaghy on Sunday 15 May and be part of a commemoration that remembered the sacrifice of a son of south Derry whose life as a guerrilla fighter was renowned.

In remembering Connolly also, the organisers were tying two threads of the republican experience together and remembering that when Connolly walked into the GPO in 1916 he was challenging the power of the British Empire. The reaction of partition and the formation of the unionist statelet left a legacy that led, inevitably, to the pogroms of 1969 aided by the state's police.

Young men like Francis Hughes and his cousin, Tom McElwee, took the path they did as a result of the violence meted out to the nationalist people by the unionist regime; the failure of unionist politics took the North down the road of conflict.

Telling it any other way is to rewrite history.

No one can say what Francis Hughes would say or think about the present phase of struggle but it is heartening to attend a commemoration like Sunday's and see so many republican former fighters, men and women, who spent their young years in British prisons and who are now spearheading Sinn Féin's activism.

• The South Derry & South East Antrim Re-enactors take centre stage

One of those, Councillor Seán McGlinchey, speaking from the heart, addressed the crowd near the cemetery where both Francis and Tom are buried.

He spoke of how he and Ian Milne visited the family homes of people, still anonymous, whose doors were open to the men and women of Óglaigh na hÉireann, people whose role in the struggle was every bit as valuable as that of those on active service.

His point was to acknowledge and appreciate the contribution to the struggle of so many people throughout the townlands and countryside who, despite the danger and threat that they faced, played their part.

He was also saying that, with the same support, contribution and commitment from the “ordinary” people, the Republic envisioned in 1916 would be established.

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