Joe Mc Cann - Funeral and Tributes

Funeral and Tributes

McCann's funeral on 18 April 1972 was one of the largest Republican funerals of modern times. Between 6,000 and 20,000 mourners attended it. A guard of honour was provided by 20 OIRA volunteers and a further 200 women followed carrying flowers and wreaths. Four MPs including Bernadette Devlin were also in attendance. Cathal Goulding the Official IRA Chief of Staff, provided the graveside oration in Milltown Cemetery. Goulding said;

"By shooting Joe McCann their Whitelaws and their Heaths and their Tuzos have shown the colour of their so called peace initiatives. They have re-declared war on the people...We have given notice, by action that no words can now efface, that those who are responsible for the terrorism that is Britain's age old reaction to Irish demands will be the victim of that terrorism, paying richly in their own red blood for their crimes and the crimes of their imperial masters".

In spite of this hardline rhetoric, however, Goulding called a ceasefire just six weeks later, on 29 May 1972.

One of the more surprising tributes to McCann came from Gusty Spence, leader of the Ulster Volunteer Force loyalist group. Spence wrote a letter of sympathy to McCann's widow, expressing his, "deepest and profoundest sympathy" on the death of her husband. "He was a soldier of the Republic and I a Volunteer of Ulster and we made no apology for being what we were or are...Joe once did me a good turn indirectly and I never forgot him for his humanity". This is thought to refer to an incident in which three UVF men wandered into the Lower Falls, were captured by OIRA men, but were released unharmed on McCann's orders.

In 1997, a plaque was unveiled at the spot on Joy street in the Markets where McCann was killed. Members of the various republican factions, the Workers' Party of Ireland (ex Official IRA), Sinn Féin (political wing of the Provisional IRA) and the Irish Republican Socialist Party (a splinter, along with the Irish National Liberation Army from the Official republican movement in 1974) were all in attendance.