Crowds line streets in tribute to General Liam Lynch in Cork 

HUNDREDS of people lined the streets of Fermoy on Easter Sunday afternoon as a dozen pipe and drum bands marched through the town on their way to the centennial commemoration of the death of anti-Treaty IRA leader General Liam Lynch.

The parade began just after 2pm, by the Michael Fitzgerald memorial outside the former Wesleyan church where, in September 1919, Lynch had led a daring raid against British soldiers on their way to Sunday service.

Carrying revolvers and hurleys, IRA volunteers had disarmed the soldiers and, in the melee, British soldier Private William Jones, 20, was shot and killed, becoming the first British military casualty of the War of Independence.

One of those involved in the Fermoy raid was local man Michael Fitzgerald, who was subsequently arrested in Cork City Hall on August 8, 1920, alongside Lynch and Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney.

Lynch gave a false name and was released. Fitzgerald later died, aged 38, after 67 days on hunger strike in Cork Prison, on October 17, 1920, eight days before the death of fellow volunteers Joe Murphy and, in Brixton Prison, Terence MacSwiney.

Yesterday’s parade was led by the Mayor of Co Cork Danny Collins and deputy mayor Deirdre O’Brien, walking behind a tricolour carried by a relay of relatives of Liam Lynch.

Ms O’Brien wore the full service medal of her grandfather, Tomás O’Keeffe, who had fought in both the War of Independence and Civil War.

The first of the dozen bands in the parade was the County Cork Pipe Band New York, one of three bands from the United States, and there was an especially warm welcome afforded to members of the Eamon Bulfin Legacy Pipe Band who had travelled to Fermoy from Argentina.

The parade went up Patrick’s Street, past the former J Barry and Sons, where Liam Lynch worked, through Pearse Square, and across the Kent Bridge, where, on May 2, 1916, Lynch, 23, a shop assistant from Anglesboro, had watched aghast as the four Kent brothers, captured after a gun battle at their Castlelyons home, were paraded and humiliated through the garrison town.

That event, and Thomas Kent’s subsequent execution at Victoria Barracks for the murder of RIC head constable Rowe, served to radicalise Lynch, and to make him the committed volunteer that history remembers.

In April 1921 Lynch was made commandant of the First Southern Division, in command of approximately 31,000 men. Vehemently opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, in mid-1922 Lynch became chief of staff of the anti-Treaty IRA.

On Tuesday April, 10, 1923, Lynch was mortally wounded on the Knockmealdown mountains by the Free State National Army.

His last wish was that he be buried in the Republican plot in Kilcrumper in Fermoy, beside Fitzgerald, “the greatest friend I ever had on this Earth”.

Yesterday, more than 1,000 people gathered at Lynch’s grave in Kilcrumper on the eve of his centenary to hear an address by chairperson of the Liam Lynch commemoration committee, Cllr O’Brien, and an oration by Tralee historian Tim Horgan of the National Graves Association.

In her speech, Ms O’Brien said it is known that General Michael Collins and General Liam Lynch had both been distraught at the Civil War, Lynch “being a reluctant fighter” and, she said, Collins’ hand was forced by British prime minister Lloyd George to quell the attempted rebellion at the Four Courts by the anti-Treaty IRA.

“It was Lloyd George’s British machine guns that led to the start of the Civil War,” Ms O’Brien said.

“We cannot deny that we lost two of our greatest leaders, Michael Collins in Béal na Bláth in August 1922 and General Liam Lynch, on the Knockmealdowns in April 1923.”

In a fiery speech, Mr Horgan said that when Britain realised that Ireland could not be ruled by the crown, it decided that Ireland would be ruled for the crown. “England knew the Irish well, they knew that for a little power and privilege, principles would be easily bought,” Mr Horgan said.

“They guided us towards civil war, Britain’s standard bequest to all its colonies. They knew that we would do to each other what they had not dared to us. And they were right,” he said.

Mr Horgan said Lynch, a man of principle, could never betray his colleagues, living and dead.

“To surrender would have been to recant, to renounce those principles, a tacit agreement that there had been justice in the punishments inflicted by the British and the Free Staters on those thousands of patriots who had suffered in Ireland’s cause." 

“While others had abandoned their republican ideals and some of his comrades on that final fateful day would, in time, dilute those principles, Liam Lynch would not and did not.

“He had declared for a republic and would live under no other law.”

Among the politicians in attendance at the Liam Lynch commemoration were Billy Kelleher MEP, Fianna Fáil Cork East TD James O’Connor, former Cork East TDs Ned O’Keeffe and Kevin O’Keeffe, Independent Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath, Limerick Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins, former mayor of Co Cork Cllr Gillian Coughlan, councillors Gearoid Murphy, Sheila O’Callaghan, Ian Doyle, William O’Leary, Frank O’Flynn, and Deirdre Kelly.