Annual Pat Walsh Commemoration, Dunamaggin Easter Sunday 2022

A Chairde, Is mór an onóir dom a bheith anseo ag caint libh inniú. Do bhí m’athair John Hassett ann i míle naoi déag ochtú seacht (ceapaim) ag an gcomóradh céanna. Táim an-bródúil as mar tá cruinnithe mar seo an-tábhacht. Ní dhéanfamid dearmad ar ár stair! It is a great honour for me to stand here today to speak to you in lovely Dunamaggin 35 years after my father delivered the oration here at this proud memorial to those who fought for our freedom.

It is lovely to see so many young people here today. I remember as a young girl being taken by my father to events like these. We would stand and wait and when it was over my father would start chatting with so, so many people. These days, I often see my own mixed feelings from those years reflected in my children’s faces and I sympathise with them! But I also rejoice, because I hope that one day they too will understand the importance of their presence and they will look back with pride that a portion of their childhood was spent remembering the heroes of our past. So, to all the children and teens here I say a special and heartfelt thank you for being here. Your presence is so important for, in another 35 years time, we will depend on you to carry on this wonderful tradition. The year 1898 marked the Centenary of bloody revolution that saw thousands of Irishmen and women tortured and murdered because they dared to fight for Justice and Equality. In 1898, events were held across the country to remember the violence, the valour and the victims of that year of Liberty, when the flame of the Republic united Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter against the common enemy of Empire. Can it be a coincidence that only 18 years after those Centenary commemorations the flame of truth, liberty and equality was lit again on Easter Monday 1916? When Padraig Pearse stood outside the GPO and proclaimed the Republic where all children would be cherished equally, did he feel the spirit of Tone and Fitzgerald beside him? It was no coincidence! Many of those young men and women in the GPO were compelled there by the memory of Tone and Fitzgerald, Thomas and Robert Emmet of Henry Joy McCraken, Betsy Grey and Anne Devlin.

And so how powerful a thing is commemoration! It refuses to let us cast aside the brave acts and deeds of those who have gone before us. It proudly declares the valour of those who walked in the footsteps of Eoghan Rua, Tone, Davitt, Clarke and Connolly. There are those who tell us that we should look on historical people and events with no judgement. That the Tan who was shot in an ambush should somehow be remembered with the same honour as the heroes of the columns who marched down this street with their rifles on their shoulders. And yet many of these same people, in the same breath, will denounce Seán Russell as a Nazi, they will denounce Tom Clarke as a racist, they will denounce Seán Treacy as a gunman. These are the people who claim the likes of Pat Walsh were deluded and duped by the rhetoric of Pearse. Their non-judgement it seems is reserved for the enemies of the Republic of 1916 and 1798. We now live in a country where the elite tell us that in order to be a mature nation we should acknowledge events of 100 years ago through the lens of a “Shared Experience”. They want us to remember it all in some sort of historical fog where every death- whether it is of a Tan or a Volunteer or an innocent civilian or indeed a spy or informer - is some form of shared experience. They tell us that this is how Mature people remember their history. But the notion of “shared experience” in this context is a nonsense. The victim and the perpetrator of a crime have shared an event but their experiences of that same event are vastly different. How can we stand to look at Thomas Clarke memorialised with equal status as Percival Lea Wilson the man who stripped him naked, insulted and humiliated him after the surrender of Easter Week? How could a Jewish man or woman standing in Auschwitz be expected to acknowledge some kind of “shared experience” with the Nazi Guard who forced their ancestors into the gas-chamber? How can a woman savagely beaten by a gang of Tans somehow honour her abusers? How can Pat Walsh or Seán Quinn have a parity of esteem with the men paid by the British Empire to hunt them down?

And there are those who would rather we forget. They say remembering serves no purpose but to divide us from each other. I say no! It is our duty to remember. We carry with us an enormous debt to these heroes from our past. It is our duty to remember, and I applaud everything that the people of Dunamaggin have done to remember! This annual commemoration has kept Pat’s memory alive within the hearts and consciousness of the local community. The sublime Pat Walsh documentary as well as the lectures and books written about Kilkenny’s fight for freedom have ensured that the memory of those times will endure here despite the pressure to forget. When the young men and women chose to fight in 1920 & 1921 the future was not known to them. They were assured of no success – indeed for them all they had was a history of failure, betrayal and tragedy. A history of misery, starvation and repression. And yet, as so often before, hope gave way to experience – they took up arms against the old enemy and struck for freedom. They were ordinary men and women like The Barrons , the Walshes the Laharts , The Carrolls, The Hallorans, the Holdens. They were not born to be soldiers. They chose to fight for freedom. They believed that the future could and should be better than the present for all the people in this land. Every day that they organised, drilled, fought, protested in prison, every hour they spent walking the roads delivering dispatches, moving and hiding guns and sheltering the hunted, they made a conscious choice. At any time, they could have chosen the easy path, the comfortable so-called respectable path that offered the promise of health and prosperity. Instead, they took the road of hardship, sacrifice and danger and they did it all for freedom and for the future. And when Pat Walsh, newly released from prison, chose to join the combined column of Ned Aylward and Seán Hogan he once again, as he had done for his adult life, put the need of Ireland above his own personal comfort. On that May morning in Knocknagress when Paddy Power, Seán Quinn and Pat Walsh were cut off from their comrades and attempted to escape along the dikes and ditches through the fields. It was Pat and Seán’s final via Dolorosa their way of the Cross, their way of sorrows. Seán died from his wounds that night but Pat lingered on suffering his own 5 day personal and terrible Calvary. It is fitting we remember them this Easter day as they gave their lives not just for their friends but for us all. A year after Pat’s death huge crowds attended his 1st anniversary commemoration. The men and women from Kilkenny and Tipperary flocked to pay their respects to this brave and dedicated soldier. It was May 1922 and, of course, the country was on the threshold of more painful violence.

But remember! it was Empire’s guns that started the Civil War as surely as it was British pressure that forced the great Michael Collins to fire on his friends in the Four Courts in July 1922. It was British interference that thwarted the peace moves of August 1922 that might have seen the swift end of the Civil War before the bitterness of murder, assassination and execution could destroy the hopes of peace, prosperity and unity for generations. And good, honourable men on both sides were killed- like young Thomas Brownrigg shot at Woodroofe in October 1922, and Captain Ned Somers killed in Castleblake in April 1923. Both those men wanted a free and united Ireland where poverty and fear was no more. Let the tragic Civil War teach us one thing. Despite the differences carefully fostered by a foreign power that we have come here together as Irishmen and Irishwomen united under the Republican ideals of 1798 & 1916. And so, this year as every other, together on Easter Sunday here in beautiful Dunamaggin, we remember these good and noble men and women. Let us be proud that while we still acknowledge our outstanding debt to them the flame of hope is not extinguished. We must make good the still unrealised vision of the Easter Proclamation. Now at the dawn of our most tragic of Centenaries, we still hope that Tone’s, Clarke’s and Connolly’s vision of a United and sovereign Ireland is achievable. Let us never forget their vision of an Irish Republic that represents all the citizens of all 32 counties. A Republic where political and ideological differences can be respected. A Republic that cares for the most vulnerable among us. A Republic that provides opportunities to everyone to achieve their highest potential a Republic where we work together for the betterment of all our citizens. It was the Common vision that united Republicans a century ago and which united Catholic Protestant and Dissenter in 1798. It can and will unite us all again. Go raibh mile maith agaibh!