IRISH REPUBLICANS SHARE A GRAVEYARD WITH BRITISH SOLDIERS, Milltown Cemetery, an interesting spot!

We visited the City Cemetery in Belfast a short while ago, and today we cross the Falls Road to Milltown Cemetery. A lot of work goes into these videos as you can well see! You can now buy me a pint as a means of appreciation for my work on Naked Ireland, no obligation, obviously - only if you can afford it... I appreciate it. Cheers. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/nakedire... It’s certainly not as attractive as City Cemetery, but it’s a place that is indelibly imprinted on our consciousness, not least because of the bizarre Michael Stone grenade attack on republican mourners here in 1988, which was splashed across our TV screens, but also because of the Republican plot itself in which notorious figures from the republican paramilitaries are buried, including the IRA Hunger Striker Bobby Sands. That aside, there are many other interesting graves in Milltown that have no connection with The Troubles. A large Celtic Cross, for example, commemorates Catholic Priests, and is part of a section of the cemetery celebrating over two dozen “good priests” as they are described, most of whom had strong pastoral links to West Belfast. It’s an impressive high celtic cross. Indeed this that of the cemetery has some of the most prestigious looking graves and memorial stones erected since the cemetery opened in 1869, specifically to cater for Belfast’s expanding population of Catholics. We saw what was called the “poor ground” when we visited City Cemetery, and Milltown has a similar area. In fact there are three sections of open space, each the size of a football pitch in which over 80,000 people are buried in unmarked graves. A large number of these people died in the 1919 flu pandemic. It’s sobering to think that so many people could be laid to rest here without even so much as a simple headstone. We also visit the Republican plot. To put things in context, while the Republican plot is the area most associated with Milltown, in fact the majority of the 200,000 people buried in this 55 acre cemetery are ordinary Catholics. This first memorial we arrive at is the County Antrim Memorial. This was established in 1966, (so before the most recent Troubles started) on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising. But this is not a memorial solely to modern Republicanism. The dead remembered here date back as far as 1797, a year before the United Irishmen rebellion. That organisation the United Irishmen was inspired by the American and French revolutions and was founded by Presbyterian merchants who sought alliance with what they described as “catholic majority fellow countrymen”. Modern republicanism, also represented in and around this Antrim Memorial, had no such Presbyterian buy in. Then we look at the scene of the famous Michael Stone attack on the cemetery on 17th March 1988. Mourners had gathered here to bury three members of the IRA shot dead by British SAS in Gibraltar. Stone, through grenades into the crown and opened fire with pistols. He was chased in this direction down to the motorway by a large crowd who caught him and beat him until he was rescued and arrested by police. But, IRA members are not the only republicans buried in the cemetery as you can see from the large memorial to the Workers Party, or another memorial to “Oglaigh na hEirann” which refers more generally to Soldiers of Ireland. In fact, Milltown has republicans from The INLA, IPLO and different factions of the IRA buried in the cemetery. A little further up we have what’s known as the New Republican plot. So the little sea of flags signals our arrival at this most recent of Republican memorials. The individual graves here are a who’s who of Republican activists that includes those mentioned earlier shot in Gibralter, as well as hunger strikers like Bobby Sands who died in the H Blocks. There are so many reminders elsewhere in the cemetery that the violence of the recent troubles was not unique. As seen here in the Harbinson Memorial from 1912 commemorating republicans imprisoned in County Antrim Jails. But the Graves in Milltown Cemetery of people killed in conflict extends well beyond the Republican plot and Republican ideology. For example, we visit the Cross of Sacrifice, erected after WW1 in honour of British Commonwealth Service personnel from both world wars. There are a total of 154 buried here as well as 10 foreign national servicemen. Come and wander around, there are some very interesting things to see and while the republican plot always seems to dominate the cemetery, just like in the city cemetery close by, there’s much more to see besides. Many of you won’t know for example that of the unidentified corpses from the Belfast Blitz of 1941, 30 unidentified bodied that bore effects identifying them as Catholics, were buried here.