Join The Irish Freedom Camp At The Garden Of Remembrance
At midday on May 17th the British Head of State, aka the ‘British Queen’, will touch down at Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel on the outskirts of Dublin City. From there she will be taken by road to Áras an Uachtaráin in the Phoenix Park for an official welcome and a tree planting ceremony.
Windsor is then scheduled to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Garden of Remembrance on Parnell Square. The presence of the Commander-in-Chief of the British military in Dublin’s inner city on the afternoon of May 17th 2011 echoes with the presence of British agents in that part of Dublin on the afternoon of May 17th 1974.
On that occasion Windsor’s foot soldiers were in Dublin to plant three no-warning car bombs which ultimately killed twenty-six men, women and children. An entire family including a mother, father and two baby girls were killed on Parnell Street, just metres from the Garden of Remembrance. A further seven people died in Monaghan where a fourth car bomb exploded.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of British state involvement in the Dublin/Monaghan bombings successive British governments have blocked all attempts to get to the truth of who was responsible for the carnage of May 17th 1974. And the Dublin/Monaghan bombings are but one example of collusion between the British state and unionist death squads which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people in the occupied Six Counties. These people were as much victims of the British state as those that died at the hands of the official death squads of the British Army, RIC and RUC.
The Garden of Remembrance is dedicated to those who have died fighting the British occupation of Ireland. To bring the British Head of State there while Britain continues to occupy the Six Counties is provocative in the extreme. To do so on the anniversary of the Dublin/Monaghan bombings adds severe insult to injury.
At 3pm on May 15th Éirígí will establish an Irish Freedom Camp at the Garden of Remembrance in opposition to the proposed visit to the monument by Elizabeth Windsor. The Freedom Camp will stay in place twenty-four hours a day to defend the memory of those who gave their lives that Ireland might be free and to defend the integrity of the ongoing struggle for Irish freedom.
Speaking in advance of the establishment of the Irish Freedom Camp, cathaoirleach Éirígí Brian Leeson urged as many people as possible to join the camp: “Those who plan to bring Elizabeth Windsor to the Garden of Remembrance hope that it will mark the culmination of a forty year policy of ‘normalisation’ of the British occupation of Ireland. They intend to cynically use the memories of those who have fallen in the fight for freedom to betray the very dream for which those women and men died.
“We all owe a great debt to those who have died so that we and future generations might be free. It is the least that we can do to defend their memories and the integrity of the cause for which they fought and died. It is important to remember that those who came out in 1916, and before and since, didn’t take up arms to free the Twenty-Six Counties. Their fight was for a free Ireland, all thirty-two counties of it. 5000 British soldiers remain stationed on Irish soil just one hour from Dublin. By opposing the Windsor visit we in the Twenty-Six Counties are sending a very strong message of solidarity to our sisters and brothers in the Six Counties.
“If Windsor succeeds in visiting the Garden of Remembrance it will mark a black day for Dublin and for Ireland. We are establishing the Irish Freedom Camp with the explicit objective of preventing that Windsor wreath-laying ceremony from taking place. If sufficient numbers of people join the protest the state will have no option but to cancel Windsor’s visit to this most important of freedom monuments. We hope that the people of Dublin’s north inner city in particular will follow in the great republican tradition of that part of Dublin and join the Irish Freedom Camp.”
The Irish Freedom Camp will be established at 3pm on Sunday, May 15th at the Garden of Remembrance on Dublin’s Parnell Square and will stay in place until the afternoon of Tuesday May 17th. If you support the cause of Irish freedom and you are opposed to the Windsor visit join us at 3pm on Sunday and stay for as long as you can, or join the camp at any point on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday.
The success of the Irish Freedom Camp will depend on large numbers of people being present at all times over the forty-eight hour period that the camp will be in existence. If you are in a position to join the camp for a number of days, or hours, it would be helpful for you to email stopthevisit@gmail.com with the times that you are available to participate in the freedom camp.