A private message from the London embassy to the Department of Foreign Affairs claimed that the hunger striker Frank Stagg had made a codicil to his will banning his brother Emmet, now Labour whip, from his funeral.
The 35-year-old republican prisoner died in a British jail on February 12th, 1976, after refusing food for 62 days. He was serving a 10- year sentence for conspiring to commit arson. A note from the embassy on February 15th said that Frank Stagg had made the codicil a few days before his death stipulating that Emmet should not be allowed to attend the funeral and that arrangements should be in the hands of Derek Highstead, a Sinn Féin organiser.
The funeral was controversial as the government thwarted plans for a military-style funeral by diverting the aircraft carrying his body to Shannon, instead of Dublin, and flying the body by helicopter to Mayo. The funeral was boycotted by many family members and republican sympathisers as a result but his widow, Emmet and his sister Veronica were at the graveside. Six months later, IRA volunteers dug up the coffin and reburied Frank Stagg in a nearby republican plot.
