Ferris draws lessons of history at Kilmichael

Up to 1,000 people attended the 83rd anniversary of the famous Kilmichael Ambush last weekend. Kerry TD Martin Ferris was the main speaker and he delivered a passionate address, lauding the Volunteers of the IRA's Third Cork Brigade, under the command of Tom Barry, who struck one of the most devastating blows against the Crown Forces in the Tan War.

"Kevin Myers and others might find that offensive," said Ferris, "but I for one, and I know that all of you here, are not one bit ashamed of celebrating the feats of the men and women who stood up to the Tans and taught them that if they were going to hold Ireland for the Empire, they were going to have to pay a high price for it."

Ferris said that when he met Tom Barry in Dublin at the end of the first Hunger Strike in 1980, "he made it very clear to me that he was not only fully supportive of the men and women in the H-Blocks and Armagh, but that he saw no difference between the fight being waged in the occupied part of Ireland by the IRA and the fight he had been involved in the 1920s".

Ferris concluded: "A certain newspaper ran a headline the day after the Assembly elections that suggested that Sinn Féin's day had come. It has not. That was only an election. Our day will have come when we have achieved the all-Ireland Republic fought for by the men of the Third Cork Brigade. That task is not one for Sinn Féin alone but for all Irish people who wish to secure a peaceful and just future for all our people. And as Bobby Sands said, 'Our revenge will be the laughter of our children' and that doesn't mean the laughter of Catholic children, it means the laughter of all our children."