James Lillis Commemoration

The following oration was read at the graveside of IRA Volunteer James Lillis in Carlow yesterday. The oration was delivered by Phil O'Donoghue, lifelong republican and the last surviving member of the infamous Brookborough raid.

A chairde, I would like to thank the family and contemporary comrades of Volunteer James Lillis for inviting me to speak at his commemoration here today. It is an onerous honour to stand at the graves of our patriot dead because it is here Irish republicanism must be at its most self-critical.

It is over a hundred years since IRA Volunteer James Lillis was executed by Free State forces in Carlow Barracks. His executioners, the Free State army, came into existence from an act of the British Parliament as a counter revolutionary force to combat the defenders of the Irish Republic, Oglaigh Na hEireann. It is a role they continue to this day, ably aided and abetted by a modern counter-revolutionary force, Provisional Sinn Féin.

We are kind when we call them politically and militarily illiterate because they had the clear guidance of both history and sacrifice to guide them on the proper path to national sovereignty. They bartered peace in Ireland for auction politics and the illusion that British interests in Ireland are concerned with Irish rights.

Their prospective partners in government are either those who executed seventy-seven republicans in Free State Jails or those who brought the English hangman to do the same in their so called Twenty-Six County Republic.

There is no all-Ireland architecture in a British treaty that maintains a claim of British sovereignty over a part of Ireland. Our national sovereignty remains violated and the delusion that it can be ended by vesting control of constitutional change in a British Minister is a betrayal of history and logic.

Domestic governance under British rule is not a stepping stone towards separatist objectives but rather a strategic outworking of British foreign policy as it concerns its own military and economic goals.

A 32 County Ireland enmeshed in the infrastructure of NATO, the British Commonwealth and Western bankers is an Ireland far removed from that envisaged in the Proclamation of 1916 and the Democratic Programme of Dáil Eireann. Like Volunteer James Lillis we are not for Home Rule, we are for the republic of Tone, Connolly, Barry and Sands.

The struggle for Irish freedom has made common cause with many other similar struggles throughout the world. And as we stand here today our thoughts must turn to the ongoing genocide in occupied Palestine.

The relentless colonisation and displacement of peoples throughout the Middle East is leaving a trail of devastation in its wake with the added destructive legacy that proxy Western regimes visit upon their own people in terms of persecution, corruption and theft of national resources.

But as we call for an immediate end to the Zionist genocide the voice of Irish republicanism also calls for the full restoration of Palestinian sovereignty as a first and necessary step to rebuilding peace and stability in the region.

We commend republican activists for their frontline involvement in the many Palestinian support groups especially the vanguard activism of the BDS Movement. But we must not lose sight of the needs of our own struggle.

We cannot stand at graves such as these and shirk our responsibilities as to the fractured nature of today’s Republican Movement. Our patriot dead display a perfect unity by the selfless sacrifice they have paid for Ireland’s freedom.

In the absence of our ability to impact on the national political narrative it may be that our only recourse to gain some form of republican cohesion is to return to these graves and demand it of ourselves.

Every county in Ireland holds graves of our patriot dead. They also contain monuments and marking stones of our leaders and significant events throughout the republican struggle.

Let republicans in each of those counties make it their solemn duty to identify those graves and monuments and through local initiative and leadership organise commemorations, not simply to honour them, but to rally the core republican message in their name.

Let this be the task for the new year for those assembled today. There is no national republican leadership so leadership must begin here. Irish republicanism will not be restructured from the top down but from the grassroots up.

We do not need new organisations, nor new slogans nor the illusion of unity to bolster numbers. Our patriot dead did not give up their lives for praise, they did so as a deliberate military, political and ideological act to advance the cause of Irish freedom.

There is only one question from the grave of Volunteer James Lillis and that is; are we there yet? It is an onerous task to try and answer it but answer it we must.

Beir Bua!