Gerry Adams lauds IRA veteran
More than 1,000 supporters of Sinn Fein and the outlawed Irish Republican Army showed up for the funeral of Martin Meehan.
Wednesday, 07.11.2007.
12:31
More than 1,000 supporters of Sinn Fein and the outlawed Irish Republican Army showed up for the funeral of Martin Meehan. The casket bearing the 62-year-old Meehan, one of the IRA's best-known figures, who died Saturday of a heart attack, was carried through the streets of his native north Belfast before the burial in Milltown Cemetery, where the IRA honors its own. Gerry Adams lauds IRA veteran Like IRA funerals in the old days, the coffin was draped in an Irish flag and topped with a black beret and gloves, part of the underground group's informal uniform. But, reflecting the IRA's 2005 decision to abandon violence and disarm, the pallbearers included no masked men in camouflage uniforms, nor did anybody fire a volley over the grave. In his graveside oration, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams — a former IRA commander who, like Meehan, joined the group in 1966 — lauded his longtime colleague as a true believer in the cause of uniting the two parts of Ireland. "If he could speak now, he would tell us he is still an IRA volunteer," Adams said. He listed landmarks of Meehan's IRA career: a daring Belfast prison escape in 1971, myriad convictions for everything from riots to kidnapping, a 66-day hunger strike and more than 18 years behind bars, and his conversion upon his 1994 release into a persuasive advocate for negotiations and compromise. Adams said it was "obvious that his life was a hard life. Yet in my opinion he would have chosen no other." Adams and two other longtime senior IRA officials — Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness and Brendan "Bik" McFarlane, who directed the IRA's 1981 prison hunger strike that left 10 men dead — carried the coffin together following Meehan's Requiem Mass at Holy Cross Catholic Church. Many other veterans — including Sean Kelly, who survived a botched IRA bombing in 1993 that killed nine Protestant civilians and an IRA colleague — took turns bearing the casket. In his sermon, Rev. Aidan Troy referred to Meehan's early days as a senior IRA gunman in his native Ardoyne, an embattled Catholic enclave of north Belfast that, during the high point of bloodshed during the early 1970s, feared being overrun by Protestant mobs. IRA snipers in those days killed both Protestants during riots and British troops on patrol. "He loved this community of Ardoyne ... and would have done anything to make sure it was safe," Troy said.
Gerry Adams lauds IRA veteran
Like IRA funerals in the old days, the coffin was draped in an Irish flag and topped with a black beret and gloves, part of the underground group's informal uniform. But, reflecting the IRA's 2005 decision to abandon violence and disarm, the pallbearers included no masked men in camouflage uniforms, nor did anybody fire a volley over the grave.In his graveside oration, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams — a former IRA commander who, like Meehan, joined the group in 1966 — lauded his longtime colleague as a true believer in the cause of uniting the two parts of Ireland.
"If he could speak now, he would tell us he is still an IRA volunteer," Adams said.
He listed landmarks of Meehan's IRA career: a daring Belfast prison escape in 1971, myriad convictions for everything from riots to kidnapping, a 66-day hunger strike and more than 18 years behind bars, and his conversion upon his 1994 release into a persuasive advocate for negotiations and compromise.
Adams said it was "obvious that his life was a hard life. Yet in my opinion he would have chosen no other."
Adams and two other longtime senior IRA officials — Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness and Brendan "Bik" McFarlane, who directed the IRA's 1981 prison hunger strike that left 10 men dead — carried the coffin together following Meehan's Requiem Mass at Holy Cross Catholic Church.
Many other veterans — including Sean Kelly, who survived a botched IRA bombing in 1993 that killed nine Protestant civilians and an IRA colleague — took turns bearing the casket.
In his sermon, Rev. Aidan Troy referred to Meehan's early days as a senior IRA gunman in his native Ardoyne, an embattled Catholic enclave of north Belfast that, during the high point of bloodshed during the early 1970s, feared being overrun by Protestant mobs. IRA snipers in those days killed both Protestants during riots and British troops on patrol.
"He loved this community of Ardoyne ... and would have done anything to make sure it was safe," Troy said.
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