The acknowledgement of the grief felt by families of IRA volunteers must be accepted as an important part of the Northern Ireland peace process according to the Sinn Fein President, Mr Gerry Adams, who has stressed that no section of the community has a monopoly on suffering.
In an address yesterday to thousands of republicans who attended a commemoration in Milltown Cemetery for Tom Williams, who was executed in 1942 for his role in the shooting of an RUC officer, Mr Adams said republicans were proud of all 355 volunteers listed on the IRA role of honour.
"If there is truly to be a healing process then there has to be an understanding of the equivalence of grief. "To pretend, as elements of the media do and the political establishment does, that republican volunteers do not have families, do not have loved ones, have not got feelings, is part of the open wound that yet has to be healed as part of any conflict resolution process," said Mr Adams.
He said a unionist leader had yet to acknowledge publicly the injustice of Partition or the decades of unionist misrule. "That will come," he said. "In my view, as a new dispensation is built, that too will come and all sections of our people will go forward with a better understanding that no one has any monopoly on suffering."
It was part of the British strategy to isolate and demonise the IRA, added Mr Adams. "We know that there are brave people in all sides of any conflict, including this one."
The remains of Tom Williams were reburied this week in Milltown after lying in a grave in Crumlin Road jail since his hanging when he was 19 years old. Mr Adams said he was a republican role model who, like the hunger strikers of the 1980s, had shown himself to be "morally superior" to those who sought to criminalise him.
Mr Adams said the IRA, undefeated by the British, had the courage to call the current cessation and make possible the opportunities for politicians "to carve out justice and equality" for the people of this island. "We are Irish republicans, we will always be Irish republicans. We are unrepentant about the right of the people of this island to freedom."
He insisted that the event was not "a threat" or an attempt by Sinn Fein to "bully" their way through a sensitive stage of the peace process. "That is to misunderstand and misrepresent what we are about."
Led by a colour party of around 30 young republicans, the procession of leading republicans and members of Sinn Fein took over an hour to proceed down the Falls Road in west Belfast. Crowds lined the two-mile route and later assembled to listen to speeches by Mr Adams and the veteran republican, Mr Joe Cahill, who was arrested with Tom Williams but received a stay on his execution order.
Mr Cahill said the tribute to Tom Williams was long overdue and commended the crowd for turning out in such large numbers. Quoting his former colleague he asked them to pledge to bring about the "certain day" of freedom, adding, "We can do it and we will do it and they can then rest in peace."