Sean Hogan Commemoration this year was a huge success

The third commemoration of the first march of Sean Hogan’s Flying Column and the local IRA Active Service Units and Safe House families took place on Saturday the 10th August. 

In glorious sunshine the local community, history enthusiasts, and Republicans from as far as Derry,Dublin,Kerry,and nearby Cork assembled in the field that overlooks the Fitzgerald farmyard where in 1921 Sean Hogan and Dan Breen two of the most wanted men in the British Empire led the no.2 Flying Column of the Tipperary 3rd Brigade IRA into the home of Catherine Fitzgerald which was part of a secret network of IRA Safe Houses which were operating throughout this part of Tipperary in 1921.

They had started that first march under arms just outside nearby Ballylooby village at the home of Helen Prendergast of Curraghatoor.

Local men Tomas O Connors, Tommy Ryan Maurice MacGrath,the Mahonys of Burgess were in the Column on that day, and in the crowd on Saturday were many of their descendants along with relatives of the Local Active Service Unit who would have being on duty that day to protect the Column.

The lone piper Gerry Neville of Moycarkey led the Colour party with Kilenaule man Anthony Kelly carrying the Tricolour on the boithrin that the famous men of the Tipperary IRA had also walked on. The route was lined with Tricolours and the large crowd set off along the short journey to the Monument in Crannavone.

Tom Hennessy who is part of the community group that has organised this event since it began welcomed everyone to Crannavone. Wreaths were laid by the Tipperary Independent Republican Association, and the families of the Local Active Service Units and Safe House families.

Tom then gave an account of what life under occupation by British forces in South Tipperary was like in 1921.

He said: “For me the women of the Safe Houses are the unsung heros. If word got to the British that known IRA men or ‘terrorists’ as they would have called them, were frequenting a house, a raid would follow and invariably end in a house being burnt down or wrecked and often if the occupants were not murdered they would have being badly beaten 

Tom referred to Tipperary’s proud tradition of rebelling against the Tyranny of British rule.

“Today we walk in the footsteps of those great men and women and here in Tipperary you are indeed in rebel territory. Thomas Davis said it all when he said ‘The troops live on earth could not stand the headlong charge of Tipperary. We are proud of our history here and our association with those great men and women who risked all to drive the British from Tipperary. Tom then referred to local man John Mahony whose story was only uncovered and told last October. He is known as ‘The Forgotten Soldier’

“Last October we honoured John Mahony who is buried in an unmarked grave in Duhill. He died after brutal treatment in Kilkenny jail at the hands of the Free State army during the Civil war. John would have been active here on that night of the first march of the Column.

“He, like all these men, in the words of the great Kerry Historian Dr. Tim Horgan ‘These men were born to hold a pen shovel or a Hurley, but not a gun. However a century ago, their conquered country called, and rifles sloped uneasily on their shoulders, these men of the Column began their march oblivious of the dangers they faced. If freedom had a price, they would pay it.’

Tom spoke of the achievement of Sean Hogan’s Flying Column of being able to operate in one of the most ‘heavily militarised’ areas of the then British Empire.

“Sean Hogan’s Flying Column operating in such a hostile environment up against such superior firepower, to just exist was a massive achievement ‘to be in the field’ and taking on the British.” 

The main speaker Dr.Tomas MacConmara then stepped forward to give the main oration. He began by thanking Tom Hennessy and the committee for the honour they have afforded me today, and said “it is an honour to be standing in your company on this ground which I know is

sacred to you here in South Tipperary. I understand the importance associated with this period in our history, not just to South Tipperary, not just to Tipperary, but to the country in total. I also understand the deep connection you have with that time, from the names, placenames, and sites of memory that Tom has outlined and which illuminate the landscape around us.”

“The image of young men emerging from the Prendergast household in Curraghatoor, assembling with their comrades in the ‘no.2 Flying Column’ of the 3 rd Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Republican Army, and marching onwards towards Fitzgerald’s farmhouse here in Killinure with guns resting against their shoulders, marching in unity and marching in unison directly towards their enemy, the enemy that had occupied their country, is the most fitting metaphor I think one can find for both the nature and the meaning of the Irish war of Independence, and indeed the struggle for Independence in general, and in fact the struggle for independence that any group takes up in any part of the world where the Tyranny of occupation reigns.

“Where there is occupation there will be resistance, and there will be resistance if the people in that place have not lost the connection to their land, the connection to their identity, so I can’t add anything to the historical knowledge that Tom has outlined, I am not sure if I can add anything at all, but what I will emphasise is the value of memory, the value of what we are doing today in remembering because without our memory without our cultural identity, our connection, that in 1921 drove those men into arms to fight for their country, the country that they loved, without that connection our soul is lost.” 

Tomas said the memories that are passed on that we have inherited that people like myself and Tom and others have tried to preserve, this is it what inspired the men of 1916, 1921 and this is the spirit of resistance that was cultivated in the ‘Safe Houses’. 

Tomas spoke of being delighted that the ‘Safe  House’ was put at the centre of this commemoration, and I am honoured to get the  opportunity to speak about it.

“I have said for many years that without the ‘Safe House’ then the ‘Tan’ war could not have been effectively executed”

Dr.MacConmara told of how AE Percival, the commander of the infamous Essex regiment had a large 6 inch map in his office in Kinsale barracks with known IRA Safe Houses and outhouses marked on it. He did so because he knew that the spirit and reality of resistance went well beyond the numbers documented for membership of the IRA.

“He knew in 1920 what it seems to me, some in Trinity College in 2024 have not yet realised, that the IRA had in their areas significant and committed support from the communities from which they came, there is no question about that because we know even in this small landscape around us the amount of ‘Safe Houses’ that Tom has already mentioned. We know too the consequences of offering a ‘safe house’ to the IRA men.

Giving an example of what life under British rule in Ireland was like, Dr.Mac Conmara stated that in 1921 alone there were 48,474 raids on Irish homes by British Crown forces and as you will know the vast majority of those raids were extreme and violent.

So all those people in those homes were just as much as part of the conflict, just as much participated and were just as much committed as others who took the fight to the British. Speaking of the Fenian tradition in these homes Dr.MacConmara said.

“In many of those same homes when Fenians were young, they sat against open hearth fires and heard stories of the men of 1798 and so that intergenerational insistence on remembering, insistance on keeping that spirit of Republicanism alive, we are standing here today, we inherit that tradition we inherit that spirit that responsibility, and it’s very heartening and reassuring to see it discharged in South Tipperary today with such power.”

The value and importance of the Safe Houses was then spoken of with Dr.MacConmara speaking of IRA men having had to shelter on cold nights in graveyard vaults,caves,in the open countryside on cold winter nights so that when they got the opportunity to come into a ‘Safe House’ it was very much appreciated.

I know from my research that the’ Safe House’ was always acknowledged by IRA volunteers who got support in those houses and it helps us resist and confront that ongoing revisionism that tells us that the IRA managed their campaign through some form of intimidation. If you were walking through here in 1921 you would know what support was here for the IRA.”

The largest applause came from the crowd when Dr.MacConmara stated “Irelands freedom, or as much as we got, was secured by guns, it was not won around the table at Westminister, it was not won in the halls of Dail Eireann,it was won in the fields and boithrins of places like South Tipperary and in my own county of Clare and in other counties throughout Ireland.”

Speaking of Ireland today Tomas Mac Conmara said: “There is a coordinated Government led attempt to, if not forget, to distort that memory to the point where it is unrecognisable. We here today and all the people of that tradition of remembering have a responsibility to continue it to preserve it. You see very little reference to uniting our land. You see reference to a different Ireland another Ireland and all sorts of emphasis that are brought out to deflect from the ongoing conviction and the ongoing need to bring about the reunification of Ireland.

“So who fears to speak? We need to continue to speak because despite being involved in many of the events in relation to the decade of centenaries, the hope now I know within Universities, in Government circles, is that we will all forget about it and perhaps in fifty years time we might acknowledge the 150th anniversary.

“No!! we can’t...we can’t forget it!!, we have to remember it, we have to do everything we can to illuminate the landscape around us, so that we know it and we can read it, and our children can read it, because if our children can see the ruins of a’ Safe House’ and know its meaning to their historical consciousness then they will grow up and they will insist, on the liberation of their country in time.” 

Dr MacConmara then referenced the plight of the Palestinian people referring to it as a ”genocide that traced its roots back to the British empire when Arthur Balfour signed the ‘Balfour Act’ which promised the land belonging to the Palestinian people to a Zionist hate filled colonial project that we are seeing the full manifestation of today.”

He concluded with the lines “The eyes of the dead will close when Ireland is free, the eyes of the dead will close when Palestine is free, or the eyes of the dead will never close, Go raibh mile maith agat.”

Huge applause greeted Dr.MacConmaras oration. Liam Coen of the Rebel Hearts then played ‘Tipperary so far away’.

Liam was introduced as epitomising all that is great about the Irish Republican spirit. Local man Brendan MacCarthy gave  a wonderful rendition of ‘The Galtee Mountain boy’. Liam Maoldomhnaigh a grandson of the Donnelly’s of Nodstown then read out the ‘Nodstown Proclamation.’ 

The event is getting bigger every year.