A MEMBER of the Real IRA yesterday hinted at an upsurge in the republican paramilitary group’s campaign of violence.
Dressed in a paramilitary uniform and wearing a scarf and black beret as well as sunglasses to conceal his identity, the Real IRA man emerged from a crowd of several hundred people during a 32-County Sovereignty Movement Easter Monday rally in Derry’s city cemetery.
He was loudly applauded when he said: “Our actions this year will be louder than a thousand words, beir bua.”
Earlier, nine men, all of them also wearing paramilitary uniforms, scarves, black berets and sun glasses, marched the several hundred yards from the upper gates of the city cemetery in Derry’s Creggan Estate to the republican memorial plinth.
There the Easter Proclamation was read out before wreathes were laid.
The main speaker at the rally, Marian Price, criticised Sinn Féin’s involvement in the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly by saying that “lions cannot be led by donkeys no more than republicans can be led by quislings”.
Ms Price said revisionists were working hard to ensure that partition and the proclamation could in some way be harmonised.
“We know they can’t but that is not enough. We too must prepare and because our resources are not as great as theirs, we must prepare in Fenian fashion. Our intellectual objections to this deliberate misinterpretation of our history must be matched with action on the ground that leaves our people in no doubt that 1916 is unfinished business,” she added.
“We are not anti-peace, we are not anti-politics but we are against any process which seeks to violate our sovereignty as a quick-fix to the conflict in our country.
“We will talk to the British about one issue only, Irish national sovereignty and Britain’s violation of it. We will seek the UN’s intervention as guarantor for the integrity of such talks so that Perfidious Albion can be left outside of the room. Our door remains open, our resolve remains fixed,” Ms Price continued.