With great ceremony and little sign of the divisions which foreshadowed the event, the State celebrated the funerals of Kevin Barry and nine comrades yesterday, 80 years after they were put to death.
Thousands braved a bleak October day to line the route as the 10 coffins left Mountjoy jail in Dublin, where the men were executed in 1920 and 1921.
Crowds applauded as each hearse left the jail and again when the coffins were carried into the Pro-Cathedral for a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Cahal Daly. There was more applause as nine of the coffins arrived at Glasnevin cemetery.
However it was there that the political unity surrounding the event was briefly threatened. Sinn FΘin supporters loudly cheered the arrival of Mr Gerry Adams and his colleagues. When the gates were closed to all but invited guests, some republican supporters heckled garda∅. The Taoiseach's oration was heard in respectful silence, however.
Mr Ahern placed the 10 men in historic context, comparing Ireland in 1920 with the American colonies of 1776 and citing India's founding leader Pandit Nehru in support of Ireland's independence struggle.
Earlier, in a rain-soaked Mountjoy, relatives of the dead prayed for British victims of the War of Independence and for prison officers past and present. There were prayers also for the dead who remained in Mountjoy in unmarked graves.
On a day of forgiveness, the Mountjoy governor, Mr John Lonergan, also noted that the condition of the exhumed bodies had contradicted rumours long circulating that the men had been tortured. The evidence was that they had been "well treated and given decent burials".
Reports: pages 4 and 5
