100 years ago today, counter-revolutionary Free State forces executed IRA members Liam Mellows, Dick Barrett, Joe McKelvey and Rory O’Connor.

The ‘Four Martyrs’ were commemorated by Lasair Dhearg in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast, to mark the centenary, where a wreath was laid by Belfast Branch Vice-Chairperson Ryan McGonagle and a short piece read by political ex-prisoner and former Blanketman Pádraic MacCoitir.

Pádraic delivered the following:

Lasair Dhearg have gathered here today to remember Joe McKelvey, Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett and Rory O’Connor on the 100th anniversary of their execution by Free State forces.

The four Republicans were picked for execution because they had all been officers in the Four Courts, were members of the IRA, and each one represented a different province of Ireland.

They were then buried in four different counties of Ireland – Rory O’Connor in the Republican Plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Joe McKelvey in the Republican Plot here in Milltown Cemetery, Dick Barrett in his townland Ahiohill Churchyard, Co Cork and Liam Mellows, in Castletown Churchyard, Co Wexford.

All four men were Irish Socialist Republicans and were active in all facets of struggle.

They had dedicated themselves to the creation of a Republic with a clearly set out political agenda based upon national self-determination, social and economic justice and democracy, of cherishing all the children of the nation equally and of claiming the wealth of Ireland for the people of Ireland.

Following the 1916 Rising the subsequent struggle for independence during the Tan War saw a greater influence being wielded by those who were politically conservative.

Nevertheless, through the use of guerrilla tactics, electoral interventions, civil disobedience and the establishment of alternative political structures, Republicans had virtually wrested control of the country from the British state. Britain only retained power through armed force, terror and repressive laws.

At the same time, other struggles began as workers and small farmers took control of factories and they broke-up large ranches. Workplace occupations and land seizures began taking place.

In the eyes of the middle-class and conservative nationalist elements involved in the independence struggle, there was a danger that the struggle could become one by the exploited classes against their domestic oppressors as well.

When Britain commenced the Treaty negotiations, it knew these events had unsettled middle-class Irish nationalists. Britain recognised that the best way of securing its interests in Ireland would be by those same conservative middle-class Irish nationalists realising that Britain would defend their interests too.

No longer was the objective to be securing the greatest measures of political, social and economic freedom for the mass of the population.

Instead, these objectives were ditched in favour of a Treaty that would see the creation of two partitionist states within the British empire where control of the means of production and wealth generation would still remain in the hands of a small, but very wealthy, minority.

The men we honour today recognised that fact and opposed the Treaty.

As Liam Mellows stated – “It would be folly to destroy English tyranny in order to erect a domestic tyranny that would need another revolution to free the people”.

The two states on this island which were created through the Treaty and partition were, and still remain, hostile to the interests of Irish workers and have acted against the struggles of Irish workers time and time again.

That was not the kind of future which Mellows, McKelvey and their comrades had envisaged. They knew only too well that partition would lead to the carnival of reaction envisaged by Connolly, and that carnival of reaction
has been in full flow in recent years. The Ireland of today remains controlled by imperialism, all be it in a new and more subtle form.

The objectives to which Mellows, McKelvey, Barrett and O’Connor and many others pledged their allegiance; the objectives for which they gave their lives are the same objectives which were clearly and unmistakably demanded through the 1916 Proclamation and the Democratic Programme of 1919. Those objectives have not been achieved.

Settling for anything less than the complete achievement of those Republican objectives was not an option for those who we remember and honour today.

They sought to establish a free, sovereign and independent Irish Republic – a workers’ republic as Mellows called it.

So as we remember Joe, Liam, Richard and Rory, let their example encourage us all to continue to struggle onwards to achieve their vision of a free, and truly independent, Socialist Irish Republic.

ENDS