CORK BRIGADE. First Cork Brigade – Remembrance – on the occasion of the unveiling of the monument by Éamon de Valera, President of Ireland, at the Republican Plot, St Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork, on Sunday, 17 March 1963, at three o’clock.

To perpetuate the memory of the Volunteers belonging to the First Brigade of the Army of the Republic and Fianna Éireann who gave their lives to establish the Irish Republic. The twenty-five feet high memorial cross was executed by Seamus Murphy. The base, twelve feet by eight feet, is a simple block with a carved recess with the following inscription: Do Bhuanú Cuimhne na nÓglach / a bhain le Briogáid a h-Aon d’Arm na Poblachta agus / Fianna Éireann a thug a nAnam / chun Poblacht Éireann a chur / ar bun. With Roll of Honour, Lists of Internments and Dates of Deaths. Illustrated. Cork: Lee Press, 1963. Quarto. pp. 8. Pictorial stapled white wrappers, printed in green and gold. Repair to fore-margin of upper cover. A very good copy. Rare.
This Cork event attracted more attention than it might otherwise have done due to an incident that morning when two IRA men tried to blow up the monument, and one of them, Des Swanton, was killed. In Matt Treacy’s book, The IRA, 1956-69: Rethinking the Republic (Manchester, 2011), p. 21, there is the following passage: “On 17 March 1963 a former IRA prisoner, Desmond Swanton, was killed as he and Jeremiah Madden attempted to blow up a memorial to the 1920s IRA in St Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork, in protest at its reference to their having died to establish the Irish state. The IRA issued a statement on 18 March denying that the organisation had sanctioned the operation although it did admit that the men involved had been members of the IRA. The Army Council had been aware of the plan and had attempted to call it off. Jim Lane and other Cork Republicans organised the funeral and established a Commemoration Committee which became the focus for disaffected republicans in Ireland and the United States.”

[CAT 163]