Some thousands of people including senior IRA and Sinn Féin figures, as well as former taoiseach Mr Albert Reynolds, attended the funeral in west Belfast yesterday of the former IRA chief-of-staff, Mr Joe Cahill. Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor, reports.
A long stretch of the Falls Road in Belfast was closed off yesterday as the funeral cortege made its way from Mr Cahill's home in Andersonstown to St John's church at the bottom of the Whiterock Road on the Falls.
Prominent republicans from the North and South attended the funeral Mass and later Mr Cahill's burial near the republican plot in Milltown Cemetery in west Belfast.
They included the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams; the party's chief negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness; Mr Pat Doherty MP and Ms Michelle Gildernew MP; Ms Bairbre de Brún MEP and Ms Mary Lou McDonald MEP; Mr Michael Ferris TD, Mr Aengus Ó Snodaigh TD, Mr Arthur Morgan TD and Mr Seán Crowe TD.
Several Assembly members, including Mr Alex Maskey, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin and Mr Conor Murphy, also attended the Mass and burial.
Other leading republicans present included Mr Brian Keenan; the former IRA leader in the Maze, Mr Pádraig Wilson; Brighton bomber Mr Patrick Magee; the Shankill bomber, Mr Seán Kelly; Mr Bobby Storey, Mr Eddie Copeland and Mr Danny Morrison.
A piper led the cortege and Tricolour-draped coffin of Mr Cahill, who died on Friday aged 84 from asbestosis. Among those who shouldered the coffin were Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness and the singer Frances Black, who at the graveside sang The Bold Fenian Men.
A republican guard of honour, four on the right side, three on the left, flanked the coffin. There were five men and two women in the guard wearing dark suits and ties, white shirts and black berets.
They marched in funeral time.
Mr Ferris, Ms de Brún and the Dublin Sinn Féin councillor, Mr Christy Burke, who in turn flanked the guard of honour on the left hand side, also marched in step to the guard while other mourners proceeded with a natural step.
The chief mourners were Mr Cahill's widow, Annie, and children, Tom, Maria, Stephanie, Nuala, Áine, Patricia and Deirdre.
Among the hundreds of floral tributes laid at the graveside yesterday were wreaths from the "GHQ" of the IRA and the Belfast Brigade of the IRA.
Mr Reynolds, who helped secure Mr Cahill a visa to the US during a critical stage of the peace process in 1994, also attended the funeral Mass, as did Mr Ray Bassett, Irish head of the British-Irish Secretariat in Belfast who knows the Cahill family and was there in a personal capacity.
"I worked with Joe in the peace process, in which he certainly played a major part. My only regret is that he did not live long enough to see that process concluded," Mr Reynolds said.
Five priests joined the chief celebrant, Father Desmond Wilson, on the altar for the funeral Mass. Father Wilson said that Mr Cahill had to make difficult "moral choices" in his life and that his last years were "spent helping to open the way towards a peace and stability such as we have never enjoyed before".
"For him and for all the people of his tradition war is a last resort, not a first one, a last resort which can be engaged in only when all other means to obtain justice have been tried and have failed," he added.
"This is indeed a noble tradition among republican people in Ireland. It is also the tradition followed for centuries by faithful Christians. They all believe, if war becomes inevitable, as it may, it has to be tempered by mercy and has to be stopped at the earliest possible moment," said Father Wilson.
Mr Adams in his graveside oration repeated that Mr Cahill was an unapologetic "physical force" republican, "but like all sensible people who resort to armed struggle because they feel there is no alternative, he was prepared to defend, support and promote other options when these were available.
"Without doubt there would not be a peace process today without Joe Cahill," he added.
Mr Adams said that as the September talks aimed at restoring devolution approached, the British government had a clear-cut choice.
"Either it stands with the Good Friday agreement and builds a bridge towards democracy and equality or it sides with the forces of reaction as successive British governments did for decades," the Sinn Féin president said.