Hunger Strikers and Derry’s dead volunteers to be remembered in Garden of Tribute

A Garden of Tribute to the 1981 Hunger Strikers, Volunteers Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan, and all volunteers and comrades from the Derry district is to be officially opened in the city.

The event, which will take place at 2pm on Sunday (October 2) at the junction of Rinmore Gardens and Lislane Drive in Creggan, has been organised by Danny McBrearty, the brother of Volunteer George McBrearty, who was shot dead by British soldiers, on May 28, 1981, along with Volunteer Charles ‘Pop’ Maguire.

The Garden of Tribute is looked over by a mural of George McBrearty and contains a native silver birch tree - Crann na Poblachta (Tree of the Republic).

Speaking to Derry News on behalf of his family, Danny, himself a former political prisoner, said as last year was the 40th anniversary of the 1981 Hunger Strike, he had contacted the families of the 10 men who died for permission to use their names in the Garden of Tribute.

Danny added: “George and Charles fell during the Hunger Strike, so I decided the centrepiece of the garden would be the 1916 Proclamation surrounded by a montage of photographs of all the volunteers on all rolls of honour.

“The Garden of Tribute is an all inclusive Republican project and event. I have no agenda other than remembering the dead.

“The main speaker on Sunday will be former Blanketman, Thomas ‘Dixie’ Elliot, who was a cellmate of Bobby Sands and Tom McElwee. The chairperson will be John Crawley, author of the recently published book, The Yank.”

The Yank is described as “a powerful, brutally honest, no-holds-barred recounting of his experience, John Crawley details, first, the gruelling challenges of his Marine Corps training, then how he put his hard-earned munitions and demolitions skills to use back in Ireland in service of the Provos.”

Danny said he believed Sunday’s opening of the Garden of Tribute was timely because it seemed as if constitutional nationalist parties did not intend to commemorate “Republican martyrs” in the future.

“I really do believe that,” said Danny. “In the future, it will not be politically advantageous to have these commemorations.

“What I would ask is, ‘Why are they using our dead when it suits?’. That is not the way it should be. Our dead should be respected and be remembered when their families and their comrades want to remember them. They should not be remembered for political advantage.

“After Sunday and the opening of the Garden of Tribute, regardless of what is happening politically, it will be available to anyone who wants to remember those on the montage. They will be given the chance to use the garden to commemorate their loved ones at the times of their own choosing.

“George and Charles fell during the Hunger Strike and I have got permission from all of their families for the garden,” said Danny.

Danny added he was not going to say the people who surround the Proclamation were of the same calibre as those who signed it.

“However, they are people who died for the same tradition of an Irish Republic, nothing more, nothing less.

“We do not know what this New Ireland that is being bandied about will be. What we do know is, what kind of Ireland these people fell for was the Republic of the Proclamation and to settle for anything less, I don’t think these people would have any input into it.”