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| Cecilia Conway |
When in prison Cecilia Conway would exchange letters with me. She and her husband Matt each Christmas would send me a card. I always found her correspondence strongly supportive, the demeanour she conveyed warm. Empathy was not a trait lacking from her character.
Upon release I met both her and Matt while a guest at a Republican Sinn Fein Ard Fheis. The late Ruairi O'Bradaigh introduced me to them. While I was not drawn to that brand of politics, I knew it to be genuinely held. Republican Sinn Fein whatever its limitations was never a fertile ground for career politics to grow. The path trodden was a bumpy one, littered with setbacks, frustrations, with nothing hurting quite so much as the feeling of betrayal so often visited on the camp by those who craved constitutionalizing and gagged for gravy from the aptly named train.
As a couple their joint fidelity to a sense of republicanism that had had more principle than potential, led them to part ways with Sinn Fein once the 1986 Ard Fheis approved what was for the Conways a cardinal sin. To their mind the purgatory of political isolation was easier for them to adjust to than the hell of partitionist assemblies. A former member of Sinn Fein this morning described with a large dose of humour how the careerists would knock lumps out of each other while jostling in the queue to get jobs in Stormont. That was not for the Conways. Republican Sinn Fein seemed the natural home for both.
On the morning of Cecelia's funeral I headed out to New Abbey Cemetery, Kilcullen. A Saturday, it was a beautiful sunny day which clashes with my false memory of graveyards as being cold places on the day of interment. At Kildare train station I was fortunate to get picked up by Des Dalton. Together we headed to the church and short journey to the cemetery. Cecelia was given a republican send off, fitting for a volunteer in Cumann na mBban.
At 87 Cecilia had lived a long life. Matt Born in Dundalk it was through her husband Matt, who predeceased her by 8 years, that she became involved in republican political activism. Domiciled in England the couple returned to Ireland in 1968 and immediately immersed themselves in the republican project
On the morning of Cecelia's funeral I headed out to New Abbey Cemetery, Kilcullen. A Saturday, it was a beautiful sunny day which clashes with my false memory of graveyards as being cold places on the day of interment. At Kildare train station I was fortunate to get picked up by Des Dalton. Together we headed to the church and short journey to the cemetery. Cecelia was given a republican send off, fitting for a volunteer in Cumann na mBban.
At 87 Cecilia had lived a long life. Matt Born in Dundalk it was through her husband Matt, who predeceased her by 8 years, that she became involved in republican political activism. Domiciled in England the couple returned to Ireland in 1968 and immediately immersed themselves in the republican project
It was through her activism in the campaign groups around the prison issues including the H-Block Armagh days that she entered my life.
They remained committed to the republican vision and as expected:
They took the Republican side when Goulding and co betrayed the Republic in 1969/70 and were extremely active, especially around the Border areas throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Both were involved in Sinn Féin in those years and set up the Kilcullen Cumann.
In November 1986 when the Movement was once more betrayed by Gerry Adams and Co Cecilia was again to the fore and she and Matt were among those who regrouped as Republican Sinn Féin in the West County Hotel.
Myself and Des, her long-term comrade, left the cemetery, knowing that we had observed the ground being nourished by enveloping her remains.
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