CHARLIE McGLADE COMMEMORATION IN DUBLIN

BY IAN McBRIDE

Colour Party outside the McGlade family home

» BY IAN McBRIDE

H-BLOCKS Hunger Striker Paddy Quinn, from south Armagh, told the Volunteer Charlie McGlade Commemoration in Dublin that the best monument that could be given to Charlie McGlade, his Hunger Strike comrades and all those who have given their lives for Irish freedom is to build the Republic which they fought and died for. “This can only be given to them now by working with and popularising Sinn Féin.”
Coming within 24 hours of the news that Sinn Féin was to give its backing for Martin McGuinness to be a candidate for President of Ireland, there was a paradoxically buoyant mood at this commemorative event for one of Belfast and Dublin’s finest and long-standing republicans. Memories of Charlie McGlade and Ireland’s Hunger Strikers were also at the forefront of people’s minds, no less so than when Paddy Quinn told a hushed crowd of his own experiences of the H-Blocks Hunger Strike.
Paddy Quinn was on hunger strike for 47 days. He was the 11th Hunger Striker.
He spoke of the honour it was to speak outside Charlie McGlade’s house on Mourne Road in Drimnagh. He spoke of Charlie’s commitment and dedication to the Republican Movement from his early days in Na Fianna Éireann growing up in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast, surrounded by loyalist areas, then joining the ranks of the IRA, being active in England, and serving on GHQ staff, helping to reorganise the Belfast Brigade with the help of his long-time comrade, Seán McCaughey, who himself died on hunger strike.
Charlie was shot on Wolfe Tone Street in Dublin by the Special Branch and interned in the Curragh. Charlie was on the Sinn Féin Caretaker Executive of the late 1960s to early 1970s. Charlie died serving on the Ard Chomhairle of Sinn Féin in 1982. With over five decades spent in and around the Republican Movement, this shows how focused he was on staying on the one path.
Paddy then spoke of his first-hand experiences of being on hunger strike and what it was like being in the H-Blocks and the cruelty and deprivation endured by the prisoners but the great camaraderie amongst them.
He spoke of lying in his cell and how quickly it became clear by his senses what was going on around him through noise and smells. He recalled vividly the night Joe McDonnell died and the groans coming from Joe’s cell.
“He sounded in terrible pain. I heard the trolley going down to the cell as it had a squeaky wheel. Then . . . silence. The groaning had stopped. I thought that maybe Joe had finally got to sleep. But as the trolley was pushed out there was no squeaking, which meant that Joe was being pushed out on the trolley — dead. The only noises now were the sounds of Joe’s wife and family crying.”
Paddy ended by calling on people to continue the struggle to build the Republic that Joe and all his comrades had sacrificed so much for.
Sinn Féin Ballyfermot/ Drimnagh representative Daithí Doolan urged people to get behind Martin McGuinness in the Presidential election and to continue the grassroots campaigns against the cuts and Government policies inflicting so much hardship on families at the behest of the IMF/EU to rescue the banks..
Wreaths were laid on behalf of the Republican Movement and the Charlie McGlade Sinn Féin Cumann and the Burns/Moley Sinn Féin Cumann, South Armagh.
Proceedings were closed with Amhrán na bhFiann played by the Rising Phoenix Republican Flute Band.