Members of the Bobby Sands Sinn Féin Cumann will hold a Hunger Strike commemoration on Saturday 6th September, assembling at 2.30pm in Bolton Square.
The commemoration will honour the 22 men who died on hunger strike from Thomas
Ashe in 1917 right through to the last of the ten men who died in 1981 Mickey Devine.
The event has been held annually since a monument with the inscription of the 22 names was unveiled on Grove Hill by the then mayor of Drogheda in 2006. As keeping with the tradition of past commemorations held in the town the speech will be given by a former republican prisoner. On this occasion the speaker is Charlie Casey from Newry who will speak on his recollections of the hunger strikes, also in attendance will be the Rising Pheonix band from Dublin who have also attended the commemoration every year since the unveiling.
Speaking in advance of the commemoration Cllr Kenneth Flood said “The 1981 Hunger Strike was a pivotal event in the course of Irish history -it politicised large sections of the Irish people who followed the events from February to October of that year. For this generation of
republicans it’s was akin to the emotion generated in the wake of the 1916 rising. The Hunger strike and related events mark 1981 out as a seminal year in the struggle for a united Ireland”.
Cllr Edel Corrigan and her father Stan who gave the address last year