Re: Patsy � Br�daigh to recieve the Pearl Flannery Human Rights Award. -- Stormont Watch

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Date Posted: Wed, Jan 17 2007, 16:44:42 PST
Author: National Irish Freedom Committee
Subject: Re: Patsy � Br�daigh to recieve the Pearl Flannery Human Rights Award.
In reply to: National Irish Freedom Committee 's message, "Mike Skeahan to receive Michael Flannery Spirit of Freedom Award" on Tue, Jan 16 2007, 19:39:15 PST

Patsy � Br�daigh

Patsy O�Connor was born in Roscommon town, in the west of Ireland. Her parents were both Roscommon people. Her father Luke had been attached to the 3rd. Battalion South Roscommon Brigade I.R.A. 1917-22 ( cf. �They Put the Flag A-Flyin�: Roscommon Volunteers 1916-1923�, Kathleen Hegarty-Thorne, Generation Organisation, 2005 p.408 www.generationpublishing.com ). He also played with Roscommon�s Senior Gaelic Footballers during 1910's and won a Connacht championship medal in 1916. Her mother, Barbara Haggard of Mote Park, had been a nurse in New York in the late 20�s and returned to Ireland to marry Luke O�Connor. Patsy is one of three children born to the O�Connors. The family had moved to Galway city by the 1940s and Patsy attended school at the Convent of Mercy and later University College Galway.

After graduating Patsy took up a teaching position with the Vocational Education Committee in her native Roscommon in 1953. A year later Longfordman Ruair� � Br�daigh also began teaching in the same school. Ruair� was to become a central figure in the IRA Border Campaign which began in late 1956. By March of 1957 Ruair� � Br�daigh was in jail and had also been elected T.D. for Longford-Westmeath for Sinn F�in. Patsy was a regular visitor to Ruair� in Mountjoy Jail. In October 1959 Ruair� and Patsy were married. Her husband was by now �essentially working full-time, at no pay, for the Republican Movement� ( �Ruair� � Br�daigh: Life and Times of an Irish Revolutionary�, Robert W. White, Indiana University Press, 2006, p.93 ). This situation of her husband being committed on a full-time basis with the Republican Movement continued, with the exception of the years 1962-71, until the mid-1980�s. Patsy has 6 children, born during the 60�s and brought up in Roscommon in the following decades, while she herself supported her husband.

The 1970s saw Ruair� immersed in Ireland�s struggle for her freedom while Patsy worked part-time as a teacher and her children grew to teenagerhood. Patsy also cared for many elderly relatives in the Roscommon town area. When her husband, then President of Sinn F�in, his brother, Se�n � Br�daigh, Director of Publicity, and Joe Cahill were arrested in 1972 on bogus charges, all three went on hunger strike. Patsy arranged for two Cumann na mBan women to go to Roscommon and take care of her six children and her elderly aunt, then she and Mary � Br�daigh-Delaney, sister of Ruair� and Se�n, went to Dublin and started a hunger strike themselves. They located in a caravan parked near the gate of Mountjoy Prison. They were emulating the action of Eithne MacSwiney at the same prison gate in 1922 while her sister Mary was on hunger strike inside. After several weeks all were released when the charges were thrown out of court.

The following year 1973, with new legislation allowing a person to be jailed on the mere opinion of a police chief superintendent, Ruair� was imprisoned for six months by the Special non-jury Court. When the leader of the Dublin Government, Jack Lynch, visited Roscommon in the course of a general election campaign, Patsy organised a women�s picket on him while he was in a local hotel. The Roscommon Champion called the picket a �Ladies� Committee�. Patsy delivered a protest letter to Jack Lynch and spoke to the news media in their own terms.

In January 1974, Ruairi was stopped at Shannon Airport and banned from visiting the United States. He was going to speak at the annual Noraid dinner in New York. At short notice Patsy travelled in his place and addressed the dinner attendance on the plight of Dolours and Marion Price and others then on hunger strike in prison in England. Thirty three years later her husband is still unjustly banned from entering the United States.

Patsy shares her husband�s love of the Irish language and culture and came to act as Cisteoir (Treasurer) of An Cumann Gaelach (Roscommon�s Gaelic Society) and also as an active parent in the Revivalist Irish Language Summer College in Ros Muc, Connemara where all her children spent their summers. The H-Block prison struggle of the late 1970s became a national and world-wide campaign. Patsy and her children were to the fore, on a local level, in assisting the relatives as they travelled Ireland in Blankets alerting the Irish people to the plight of Irish political prisoners in Long Kesh.

In Roscommon, as their children became adults and left home to study and work, Patsy involved herself in the Credit Union Movement, on the Board of Directors from 1986 to date and a voluntary worker in the local branch also from 1986 to the present-day. In 1984 Ruair�, Patsy and four teenagers (two of her own daughters and two friends) were involved in a traffic accident, which resulted in a lengthy spell in hospital.

Patsy has a great interest in Environmental matters � recycling, composting, etc and also in health and fitness especially yoga, alternative medicines, homeopathy and reflexology. Strong religious beliefs are held which manifest themselves both in her weekly help with the Church in Roscommon and through her concern for people and her attitude to life in general.

Today Patsy�s family, including 15 grandchildren, have all returned to live in Ireland. Patsy herself continues to support Ruair� in all his efforts as President of Republican Sinn F�in, attending the annual ArdFheis where Ruair� delivers his address to the membership. In 2006, like most years over the last half-century, it was typed and edited by Patsy, using her secretarial teaching skills.

Patsy � Br�daigh will recieve the Pearl Flannery Human Rights Award.

Ad Journal

Cumann Na Saoirse N��isi��nta is producing a commemorative ad Journal to mark the event.

Please support this year��s honorees, each of whom have done extraordinary work in the noble cause of Irish freedom, by placing an ad in the journal.
Full Page $100.00 �� Half Page $60.00 ��
Please check the appropriate box
Authorized Signature: ________________________________________________
Address: _________________________________________________________
Telephone: _____________ Email: ____________________________________

For assistance in placing an ad, please call 732-441-3679
Or email; nifcmem@optonline.net
For ticket information please call Bob at 845 354 2473
The closing date for ads is Jan 20th 2007
Please send your check or money order to:
P.O. Box 1396, Laurence Harbor, NJ 08897
Please make checks or M.O. payable to Cumann Na Saoirse
_________________
Cumann Na Saoirse N��is��unta
National Irish Freedom Committee
http://www.irishfreedom.net/

>Mike Skeahan
>
>Like "Mack the Knife" in the song from Berchtold
>Brecht's Three Penny Opera, Mike Skeahan has always
>been the strong, silent type, operating in the
>background. But unlike Brecht's character, Mike
>Skeahan was never in it for himself, but always served
>a higher cause.
>
>One of many examples of this is found back when the
>recent troubles began, the Republican movement at home
>produced a book called Freedom Struggle, which was
>promptly banned on the other side of the pond. Having
>obtained a bootleg copy of same, Mike took it upon
>himself to produce an American edition of the same
>(typeset and all, from scratch). The distinguishing
>difference on the cover was a photograph of some IRA
>men armed with US Rifle, calibre .30, M-1. [Mike had a
>love affair with the M-1 Rifle that went back to the
>end of the Second World War, when he volunteered for
>the 82nd Airborne Division.] While maintaining his
>day-time job, Mike (with the occasional assistance of
>a friend or two) put in more nights than he would care
>to remember making Freedom Struggle happen -- much to
>the chagrin of Brits and Free Staters alike.
>
>A native of New York City, Mike comes of good Fenian
>stock. His father, also named Michael, was an IRA man
>(and an Irish Volunteer before the Rising) from
>Kilkee, County Clare (a town once served by the famous
>West Clare Railroad). While on the run during the "Tan
>War", the senior Michael Skeahan met his future wife,
>Christina Barton (a member of Cumann na mBan) in a
>safe house in Limerick, operated by her father,
>Michael Barton - an IRB man.
>
>Mike graduated from Saint Sebastian's school in
>Queens, and attended Power Memorial Academy under the
>gentle tutelage of the Irish Christian Brothers, where
>he majored in football and track. He graduated from
>St. Michael's High School and then, with two buddies,
>joined the US Army for World War II. A bricklayer by
>trade, he was an officer of Local 34 of the
>Bricklayer's Union, in Manhattan.
>
>Whenever there was trouble at home, Mike was there,
>always behind the scenes, lending his own special
>support to the Cause of Irish Freedom. He worked very
>closely, and always very discretely, with the late
>Martin Madden, and others, during the recent Troubles.
>
>After the parting of the ways in 1986, Mike Skeahan
>was one of seven men who met in Mike Flannery's parlor
>to found Cumann na Saoirse. It was Mike Skeahan who
>came up with the name "Cumann na Saoirse", and who
>insisted, to avoid being embarrassed by back-sliding
>politicians at home in Ireland, that Cumann na Saoirse
>would have no foreign principle, but rather would be
>an independent American organization devoted to
>furthering the bright dream of the men and women of
>1916.
>
>Mike could always be counted on to do the heavy
>lifting, all the while shunning publicity. The only
>thing that he couldn't be counted on to do was to
>stand still long enough to be photographed. There is,
>however, a rumor that Mike Skeahan might, that is just
>might, consent to being photographed at the
>testimonial on January 26th.....
>
>Michael Skeahan will receive the The Michael Flannery
>Spirit of Freedom Award.
>
>Ad Journal
>
>Cumann Na Saoirse N��isi��nta is producing a
>commemorative ad Journal to mark the event.
>
>Please support this year��s honorees, each of whom
>have done extraordinary work in the noble cause of
>Irish freedom, by placing an ad in the journal.
>Full Page $100.00 �� Half Page $60.00 ��
>Please check the appropriate box
>Authorized Signature:
>________________________________________________
>Address:
>_______________________________________________________
>__
>Telephone: _____________ Email:
>____________________________________
>
>For assistance in placing an ad, please call
>732-441-3679
>Or email; nifcmem@optonline.net
>For ticket information please call Bob at 845 354 2473
>The closing date for ads is Jan 20th 2007
>Please send your check or money order to:
>P.O. Box 1396, Laurence Harbor, NJ 08897
>Please make checks or M.O. payable to Cumann Na Saoirse
>_________________
>Cumann Na Saoirse N��is��unta
>National Irish Freedom Committee
> >href="http://www.irishfreedom.net/">http://www.irishfre
>edom.net/

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Re: Kathleen Montague to receive the Sr. Sarah Clarke Human Rights Award -- National Irish Freedom Committee, Wed, Jan 17 2007, 17:18:15 PST