There was only one thing that Jack Lynch ever said or did that really bothered him, his political adversary, former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald said on Wednesday, and that was his refusal to honour Arthur Griffith because he was a Civil War figure. It was an extraordinary thing for Lynch to do, he said, because Griffith was a man of non-violence and the greatest leader of our independence movement, without whom we would not have independence.
Brian Maye's biography, Arthur Griffith,was launched at Griffith College in Dublin - formerly the barracks. The guests included Griffith's daughter Ita Gray, her children Shane Gray and Nora Nowlan, and grandchild Tiernan Griffith Gray. Three ambassadors attended: Pierre Dietrichsen of South Africa, Laszlo Mohai of Hungary and H.C.S. Dhody of India, as well as James Tansley from the British embassy. From FG came Frances Fitzgerald, Jim O'Keeffe and John Browne.
Maye told the gathering of the occasion when Griffith, locked up in Richmond Barracks in 1916, heard two British soldiers discussing their prisoners. "They are not as bad as we were told," said one. The other replied: "These are only the city blokes. The hill tribes haven't come in yet."