A member of Lasair Dhearg lay flowers in remembrance of the three IRA Volunteers killed on active service in Gibraltar.
Daniel McCann, Seán Savage and Mairéad Farrell were gunned down during a shoot to kill operation at Gibraltar’s Rock in 1988, while planning to carry out an operation to attack British forces.
An inquest into their deaths ruled that the SAS acted lawfully, although the three volunteers were unarmed at the time. The deaths would spark a chain of events that inevitably led to their funerals being attacked by Unionist gunman Michael Stone, who mounted an attack on mourners at Milltown Cemetery. The attack resulted in three deaths, Thomas McErlean, John Murray and IRA Volunteer Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh.
“I am oppressed as a woman, and I’m also oppressed as an Irish person. Everyone in this country is oppressed and yet we can only end our oppression as women if we end the oppression of our nation as a whole. But, I don’t think that alone is enough. This isn’t the first time that women have been seen as secondary, but women today have been through so much that they won’t just let things be. I hope I’m still alive when the British are driven out. Then the struggle begins anew.”
Mairéad Farrell, IRA Volunteer, gunned down in Gibraltar, March 6th 1988
