This journey for me began last week in Brooklyn, New York. I stood at the grave of Matilda Tone — Wolfe Tone’s wife — who is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn New York.
That’s where I started my pilgrimage to be here today, to honor her husband, here at his final resting place in Bodenstown.
That connection between Ireland and New York is more than symbolic — it runs deep in Irish history and in the struggle. From Michael Davitt and the Land League raising funds in the Bronx, to the Fenian Brotherhood headquartered on Broadway, to Clan na Gael planning resistance from New York basements — the flame of Irish freedom has long burned on both sides of the Atlantic. O'Donovan Rossa’s body had to travel from New York to be buried on Irish soil — but it carried the fire of rebellion with it. Padraig Pearse knew the significance of the New York Connection.
Wolfe Tone said that to break the connection with England was the first principle of Irish nationalism. He didn’t say to negotiate it, or to manage it or share it. He said to break it.
And while some in power today try to rewrite that legacy, we are here to preserve it, in memory and in truth. That’s why I’m so grateful there is an organization like Independent Dublin Republican. They not only helped organize this national commemoration — they ensure that Irish Republicans are given the sendoff they deserve with an Irish Republican funeral.
They uphold a sacred tradition — because if they don’t do it, who will? There are forces out there — in the media, in Leinster House, even in your own communities — who want to whitewash the struggle. To erase the names and sacrifices of men and women who gave everything for a 32-county Republic.
I told Gerry McNamara recently that I read that at the end of his life, Brendan Behan — who lit up the West End in London and was the toast of Broadway in New York —but his final wish was for a Republican funeral. Gerry told me that his own uncle stood in the Honor Guard for Behan. That tradition lives on through men like Gerry. And it does matters. What a contrast to the trial last month in Dublin where a man from Belfast worked hard to convince a jury he was never involved in the Republican Movement, and he won. Let’s hope that when his time comes, he will get his wish. No tricolor. No firing party: let his friends in Leinster House and Westminster doing the honors, toasting him for a job well done.
We live in challenging times, where the Free State government is extraditing Irish Republicans to the North — to be tried under British law, by British judges.
These are the same politicians who swan around in government cars, with their salaries, pensions, and bodyguards — at the expense of Irish Republicans who paid in blood so they could sit in power today. All their perks and mercs, were “earned on another man’s wound.”
But we’re here today to remember a man who didn’t settle. Wolfe Tone dreamed of a nation that would not compromise. A nation of equals. A sovereign Republic. We will not forget that it is a promise that Ireland still owes Wolfe Tone.
⏩ John McDonagh is a veteran New York campaigner for Irish Republicanism.
⏩ John McDonagh is a veteran New York campaigner for Irish Republicanism.
