SEÁN CRONIN was "passionate about politics, about history, about his country", and a man who made history, his nephew David Glover told the packed congregation at a memorial Mass on Saturday for the former Irish TimesWashington Correspondent, academic and one-time IRA chief of staff.
Cronin, who died aged 91 in March, was remembered at the Mass at Dungeaghan Church, Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry, celebrated by the Rev David Gunn. His ashes, brought from his home in Washington to the place where he grew up and worked first as a labourer for the local council, were interred at nearby Dromid cemetery.
Family, friends, and former colleagues gathered with many comrades who served under him in the late 1950s IRA Border campaign, “Operation Harvest”, which Cronin masterminded. Glover also recalled the esteem in which he was held as a journalist, academic and author of well-regarded historical and political works in the US, where he lived from the 1960s.
At the graveside an oration was delivered on behalf of veteran dissident republican Ruairí Ó Brádaigh by his son Maitiú. Cronin, he said, was above all “a soldier”, a leader who “led from the front” with an ability to inspire all around him, fair-minded, and a gentleman. He was a socialist who supported women’s liberation.
He said Cronin’s resignation as IRA chief of staff in 1961, opposed unanimously by the rest of the army council, had been the result of an unfounded complaint against him by US republicans. Although vindicated, Cronin had decided to resign in order not to jeopardise the organisation’s US funding.
Mourners included Martin Ferris TD and trade unionist Manus O’Riordan. Former journalist colleagues from The Irish Times Paul Gillespie, Deirdre McQuillan, Conor O’Clery and Joe Carroll were present. The paper’s Editor was represented by Foreign Policy Editor Patrick Smyth.
Principal mourner was Cronin’s second wife, Reva Rubenstein Cronin, and among the extended family in attendance were David Glover, Con Cronin, John and Michael Goggin, Kathleen May, Mary Margaret Hickey, Helen Lennon, Áine Ní Cuív, Michael Baldwin and Deirdre Calder.
Among the volunteers present from the 1950s campaign, many former prisoners, like Cronin, were Denis Foley, Jim Lane, Richard Behal, Tom Mitchell, Gerry Haughey, Micky Kelly, David Lewesly, Patrick Regan, Brian Sheehy, Larry Bateson, Michael McEldowney, Seamus Murphy, Batty Murphy, Denny Donnelly, Brendan O’Neill, Tony Hayde and Walter Dunphy.