Speakers include Committee Chair James McGetrick, Tricia McIver, MD, keynote speaker Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan (who was on the 1981 Hunger Strike), followed by AOH FFAI Chair Martin Galvin. A social will follow at the Ceilidhe Club (50 America Street, Cranston) at 2 PM.
However, the plaque has been criticized for its historical revisionism, in which it summarizes the end goal of the hunger strike being the Good Friday Agreement. It reads in part,
The death of these ten men, and the international response to it, caused The British to change this policy and also created the conditions for the armed struggle to evolve into participation in Electoral Politics, leading eventually to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
Gerry McGeough: “As someone who worked on the Bobby Sands election and campaigned on behalf of Irish Republican prisoners during both the 1980 and ’81 hunger strikes, I take issue with some of the baffling claims recorded on this plaque . . .
John Crawley: “As a lifelong republican activist, I find few concepts more disheartening than the implication that the ten IRA/INLA hunger strikers who died in the H-Blocks in 1981 paved the way for the Good Friday Agreement.
Continue reading @ TGA.
This must be galling for more than a few.
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