Eddie Carmody Commemoration

Eddie Carmody Commemoration

Ballylongford Kerry

21/11/09

Oration Francie Mackey

A chairde, Comrades

The circumstances in which I address you here today reflect clearly the nature of the struggle in which we are engaged and our ability to adapt to whatever the forces of occupation throws at us. As you know our National Secretary Marian Price was detained in a political operation by the RUC/PSNI earlier in the week. These events prohibited her attendance here today. But they in no way prohibited or deterred us from holding the event itself. On the contrary our presence here is the most telling answer we can give; nothing they can do will prevent us from honouring our patriot dead; nothing they can do can deter us from prosecuting the struggle to which we are collectively committed.

In honour of Eddie Carmody we respond to these arrests by announcing the formation of the North Kerry cumann of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement. Over the past years the Sovereignty Movement has resolved to utilise commemorations like these for a more practical and dynamic purpose. We firmly believe that to truly honour our patriot dead we must advance the cause for which they gave their lives. We resolved that to proclaim a link to the past we needed to demonstrate that we could advance republicanism into the future. This is the greatest service we can pay them. And this is why we endeavour that on each subsequent annual commemoration we are in a position to outline these advances. At this our inaugural commemoration of Vol. Eddie Carmody the formation of our new cumann in this area represents the first step in this process.

This process, like others around the country, will be based on political activism. It will be driven by democratic consensus within our movement to pursue the initiatives we believe will advance our goal of a sovereign independent Ireland. These initiatives cannot be implemented from a distance. Like Eddie Carmody’s involvement with the initiatives of his time there will be no easy way but rather a difficult struggle in the face of a very determined enemy. Eddie’s involvement robbed him of his life in a most vicious and brutal way.

His period of struggle witnessed some of the momentous events in the history of Irish republicanism. Within the short period between 1916 and 1922 our nation once again rose up against a most powerful empire. That sacrifice empowered our people to use their political strength as a sovereign people. That power gave us a National Parliament, Dáil Eireann, from which we declared our independence to the world. Eddie Carmody was a volunteer soldier in the army which defended that sovereignty. He did so with his life. The course of the next few years was to see other republicans also forfeiting their lives alas at the hands of their fellow Irishmen.

And the telling lesson to be drawn is that the British Government chose sovereignty as the very issue to undo all that had been achieved. They went to the very foundations of our struggle to undermine its legitimacy. Not only did they declare the democratic will of the Irish people illegal they also sought to define in their terms what the votes of our people stood for. This was the trap which some of our leaders fell into by accepting this British definition. This was the same trap which subsequent leaders would fall into also.

When republicans were confronted with similar events in 1997 they took the lessons of history and deployed them wisely. Their first move was to defend Irish sovereignty in the face of another British onslaught against it. But this time London was aided and abetted by the institution they created to usurp our sovereignty namely Leinster House. This is why our sovereignty had to be defended in an international context. Republican leaders at the time had secretly accepted the principle of consent in return for a seat at the negotiations table. The Dublin government were to renounce Articles 2&3 and the totality of the British strategy to ensure a national sovereignty did not exist on our island was completed. But they failed to take into account our reading of history. The 32 County Sovereignty Movement sent a delegation to the United Nations to lodge a formal challenge to the proceedings which led to the Good Friday Agreement and also to uphold the Irish people’s right to national sovereignty. The submission remains the only legal challenge to partition in existence.

The UN Submission was just a first but necessary step. It was from that first step we began to develop our future programme just as Eddie Carmody’s leaders did after the Proclamation in 1916. The status and importance of the UN Submission is to be found in the right of all republicans to utilise both its existence and its premise into whichever political programme they deem appropriate to their political strategies.

For us in the Sovereignty Movement the lessons to be learned from the ingenuity of Eddie Carmod’y generation did not stop there. Not only were we inspired by the prophetic and revolutionary text of the 1916 Proclamation but also by the disparity of beliefs which could unite behind it. That display of unity was a very important act of political pragmatism and one which we cannot ignore. We have to look at ourselves in terms that are truthful and realistic and come to understand that we cannot do this alone. There is disparity within the republican community but it remains a community nonetheless. The Sovereignty Movement believes that unity of both purpose and intent can be found by republicans coming together as equals and working toward common ground. We are strong advocates of the Republican Unity Initiative which we believe allows for this process to be successful. The Irish Republican Forum for Unity enabled for the first time our people to come and engage with republican organisations to move our struggle forward. It facilitated a dialogue between different groups and between those groups and our people. It is a true republican ethos.

Of late the project has experienced difficulties. No one said it was going to be straight forward. Indeed some of the problems are not problems with the idea itself but are concerned with external matters. But nonetheless no amount of ideological or political philosophising can escape the basic fact that this process must be seen through if republicanism is to advance its agenda. The Sovereignty Movement will not shirk its responsibilities in the face of any difficulties which may arise. Indeed we have long advocated a strategy which allows for us to collectively address these issues. It is on this basis that we will continue to work with other republicans and advance strategies and ideas which we believe can move us forward.

Like other cumainn in our organisation the North Kerry Cumann have expressed concern and have sought direction in the area of our involvement in the local politics of our communities. Guided by the thinking of James Fintan Lalor who said that the struggle between the tenant and the landlord is a microcosm of the struggle between Ireland and the British government we are devising strategies which allows our movement to fulfil this role. We have been active in our communities for some considerable time but as expressed at our recent Ard Fheis we need to give this activity focus and direction. As republicans we need to be able to go into our communities armed with solutions and alternatives. We have confronted the drugs scourge in areas where we have a presence but we fully realise that our efforts alone does not in itself represent a resolution of this difficult problem. We need the community to be involved with us and we need to establish a mechanism by which this can be accomplished. As republicans we cannot be detached from our people but neither can we allow ourselves be detached from our core objectives in helping them. These two activities we must make synonymous with each other and the Sovereignty Movement will be pursuing a definite strategy which will realise this.

As in Wolf Tone’s time the necessity for a newspaper as means of propagating our message remains the same. It is very heartening to see that the North Kerry Cumann have realised this with the issuing of the first edition of their Beir Bua newssheet. The importance of these publications cannot be over stated. They are not just of local concern but play a vital part in communicating a national message. The Beir Bua’s are the eyes and ears for our national paper the Sovereign Nation. They connect all cumainn in a way that shows our political activism extends throughout our organisation. But they are also a connection with our people, the raison detre of our existence.

Comrades eighty nine years ago Volunteer Eddie Carmody gave his life in defence of our peoples right to determine our own future. We are now part of his future yet what he fought for has still to be realised. Tonight in this part of Ireland we have taken a first step in achieving this. We stand here in his name, guided by his experiences, and declare that we will endeavour to stand here again and be able to report that the ideals for which Eddie Carmody made the ultimate sacrifice have been brought closer to fruition. No more glorious defeats. No more journeys into distraction. No more hiding in history. We are here to forge ahead, Eddie Carmody deserves no less from us.

Beir Bua