Alan Mullen

Alan Mullen, the cancer victim who moved so many of us emotionally at this year's Ard Fheis, has finally lost his couragous battle for life. He was born on 25 May, 1957 and died on 25 May 1999, his forty-second birthday.

A native of Dundalk, Alan married Anne Rafferty from Cooley and moved to the North Louth area. They have three children, Patrick (7), Niall (4) and baby Lauren (1).

Shortly after moving to Cooley, Alan joined Sinn Féin and was an active member for ten years until his death. He was a lifelong socialist republican whose great strength was in policy as opposed to politics. He was also a founding member and Chairperson of Cooley Environmental and Health Group, which was set up to investigate the very large number of cancer victims in the north Louth area.

When Alan was told in February that he had eight weeks to live, far from breaking down, he set about ``putting his affairs in order'', as he said.

Then he decided that he had some unfinished business, so he set himself a number of targets. One, he would speak at the Ard Fheis to raise the Sellafield issue; two, (most important of all) he would attend Patrick's First Communion; three, he would live until he was 42.

Not only did Alan shake all of us at the Ard Fheis with his call to ``Shout it from the roof-tops that Sellafield is killing our people'', he also made a documentary for his local radio and generally raised the Sellafield campaign to number one issue in the recent elections. Not bad for a man dying with cancer.

He was the most proud father at Patrick's First Communion on Saturday, 22 May, more than 13 weeks after he had been told he had eight weeks to live. He actually drove his family to the service and walked about the chapel for photos etc as normal.

But Alan Mullen wasn't normal - he was expectional, displaying remarkable courage and calmness. At a time when those of us around him should have been supporting him, it was Alan who was helping us!

As Sinn Féin's Arthur Morgan said in his grave-side oration: ``Alan was always a man with his eye on the big picture. He and Anne made such a strong team and were so happy together, yet they faced the situation with courage and determination.''

``That determination was demonstrated by Alan refusing to cenceed to cancer until his forty-second birthday.''

An An Phoblacht reporter was talking with Alan Mullan just days before his death at home in Grenore. Frail but very alive, seated on the sofa across from a picture of their three children - ``that's the only sad thing, that the youngest two will not have known me, are not old enough to understand'' - he talked of his six-year campaign to get Sellafield closed, as chairperson of the Cooley Environmental Health Group. ``Keep chipping away, in the end you win''. And he talked of Arthur Morgan and how he too deserved to win.

That morning, just as he got up to speak at this year's Ard Fheis, Alan learned of the death of his long time friend and comrade, Kevin Grey. They had both been jointly honoured at Easter, presented with statuettes in recognition of long service to the republican struggle.

When he addressed the Ard Fheis, Alan said: ``I am dying of a cancer which shouldn't kill me until I'm 70. I have been robbed of 30 years, 30 years that will see my children grow to be the people I would like them to be.'' He held up a book - the Cancer Registry - four years behind the time. ``This book, he said, is full of statistics - full up as well of people forgotten by everyone but their families. I will not become a forgotten statistic, because when you people go back to your homes, towns and communities, open your windows, climb on your rooftops, to the highest hills and in one voice to shake the walls of Leinster House, shout `Sellafield must close, and it must close now'.''

He was very anxious that the paper should praise the cancer team in Beaumont where Alan had gone every Tuesday for chemotherapy, he spoke of them as brilliant, and how wonderful they had been to him. He also spoke of his anger at the shortage of resources to the hospital chemotherapy unit, and how outrageous it was that patients had to get the treatment sitting on plastic chairs because there was a shortage of beds.

He described leaving the hospital one day after treatment and seeing a cortege from the airport with outriders and garda cars going from airport to town. ``That exhibition must have cost them at least a few thousand. The Government has a £280 million surplus and yet they leave the hospital without even enough beds. There is truly something very wrong.''

Last Christmas, Alan found he couldn't swallow. He had a cancer that normally only older people get, and because he was young and fit, the cancer sped into him. He had eight weeks to live. ``It gave me time to go and visit the people I know, to be with them and talk to them.''

A fighter to the last, and yet you couldn't meet a gentler, kinder, thoughtful man, who kept chipping away.

``Partir c'est mourir un peu.'' We all died a little when he died.

Ola Baeur

Ola Baeur, aged 56, died peacefully at home in the arms of his wife on Saturday 4 am in Oslo, Norway, during a short respite from hospital where he was recieving treatment for cancer.

He was the class of `68 at Sorbonne University in Paris where no one took a degree that year, he told me, as we sat in the snow on the M1 motorway, near Rathmore Gap on the first Christmas Day of Internment, our progress to Long Kesh halted by the Paras.

Ola was traveller, photographer, writer and journalist and the only voice of the republican movement, albeit self-appointed. For Oslo TV2 he was the authoritative opinion on all matters concerning ``The Troubles'', and he was a frequent savage critic of British involvement in Ireland. He spent weeks in Belfast and Derry with his republican friends soaking up the culture history and politics of the times. He was under arrest in Springfield barracks one afternoon when a sentry was killed in a volley of shots, and his editor had the full story by midnight. On 9 August, 1975, he was arrested outside the British Embassy in Oslo for banging a bin lid, and was only released when he threatened to go on hunger strike. Ola was a man of letters and a man of action. One of his 14 novels was entitled ``Rossapenna'', where he stayed when visiting Belfast. He must be the first Norwegian in history to end all his letters ``Tiocfaidh Ar Lá''.