Black Flag Vigil to Remember Comrade Patsy O'Hara

dublin | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice Wednesday May 15, 2013 20:11 by Turing

The IRSP in Dublin would like to invite all Republicans and Socialists, along with friends, family and supporters of the movement to their Hunger Strike commemoration which will take place on O'Connell Street Bridge as a banner drop and Black Flag vigil the eve of the anniversary of the death of Comrade Patsy O'Hara 32 years ago

Saturday 18 May 5 pm..

'Let the fight go on!'

Gerry Roche detailed Patsy's political development:

"On his emergence from Long Kesh Patsy joined both the IRSP and the INLA. For as he had matured in years he had also matured politically. From study and debate he had embraced socialism . . . not, however, the socialism of the academic textbook . . . but a socialism gleaned from relating his own ideas to the experience and needs of the people of Derry. Patsy had seen at first hand the misery caused by imperialism and capitalism . . . the Derry of the dole queues, the city of emigration . . . the Derry of discrimination. He knew that the city's problems were caused by the twin evils of partition and native capitalism . . . and he knew how to overcome these evils. Patsy saw that it was not enough to replace British rule with that of gombeen rule . . . but that revolutionary change was necessary. And as Patsy had learned from James Connolly in this respect. . . he learned from Connolly in others. He believed, along with Seamus Costello, the greatest practitioner of Connolly's thought in our day, that ultimately the only means that would defeat Britain was that of armed struggle combined with political action.

"And Patsy was not afraid to put his ideas into action".

After detailing Patsy's political experience of repression - on both sides of the border - Gerry Roche continued:

"Patsy understood clearly the totality of relationships between the Free State and Britain being one of slave to master. . . and he was determined that this relationship be destroyed forever through the establishment of a thirty-two county socialist republic".
After praising Patsy's courage and determination and describing him as "an outstanding revolutionary, Gerry Roche concluded:

"Caillíuint mhoi is ea é do ghluaiseacht na saoirse in Eirinn. D'oibrigh sé le fuinneamh agus dóchas ar ar son agus ár shon a mhuintire. I measc na laoch atá a ainm".