Subject: Republican Chapter closes with burial of War of Independence veteran from Kerry Maybe now "they can all get along." Here's a few articles on the life, internment, death and interment of Dan "Ballygamboon" Keating from Castlemaine. The Independent: Chapter closes with burial of war veteran Saturday October 06 2007 TO a lone piper's strains of 'The Croppy Boy', the coffin of the last veteran of the War of Independence, 105-year-old Dan "Ballygamboon" Keating, was yesterday lowered into the grave alongside the church in which he had been baptised in 1902 near Castlemaine, Co Kerry. Dan Keating, the patron of Republican Sinn Fein since 2004, was a man who was "living history"; he was the comrade of those killed in atrocities of Ballyseedy, Countess Bridge Killarney and Cahersiveen; he had seen friends die on hunger strikes and had been interned himself several times. He was "an inspiration to Republicans," Ruairi O Bradaigh, president of the party, said in a lengthy graveside oration before around 600 mourners at Kiltallagh cemetery. Normally thick on the ground at Kerry funerals, Kerry's public representatives, including over 50 town and county councillors, and eight of its nine Oireachtas members stayed away from the requiem mass for the county's oldest person. Newly elected Senator Mark Daly was the only public representative in the church. Mayor of Kerry Michael Healy-Rae and ine Gael councillor Michael O'Connor, Scarteen, attended the removal on Thursday. In the oration broken by bouts of applause, and to a gathering in which many wore Easter lilies, Mr O Bradaigh said Dan Keating had never wavered from his belief that "1916 was right, 1916 was justified"; he stood by a united Ireland and an end to the British presence in Ireland. "Dan Keating, as we know, always gave it straight from the shoulder: He regarded the so-called peace process as a surrender process," Mr O Bradaigh said to applause. He would not accept any British government presence in Ireland, regardless of how it was presented. The ceremonies at the graveside were watched by several plain clothes detectives. The parish priest of Kiltallagh, Fr Luke Roche concelebrated the funeral mass with Monsignor Dan Riordan of St John's Church in Tralee where Dan Keating travelled by bus to get weekday daily mass. He extended sympathies to Jack and Eileen Keating, nephew and niece-in-law who had taken such "loving care" of Dan for 27 years. http://www.independent.ie/national-news/chapter-closes-with-burial-of-war-ve teran-1116695.html Associated Press: IRA Veteran Dies at Age 105 By SHAWN POGATCHNIK – 1 day ago DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) — Dan Keating, an IRA member and the last surviving veteran of Ireland's 1919-21 war of independence from Britain, has died, his nursing home and fringe political party said. He was 105. Keating joined the 1st Kerry Brigade of the Irish Republican Army in 1920 and, as a rifleman, took part in two major 1921 ambushes that left at least five police officers, four British soldiers and five IRA members dead. "When you are involved in an ambush with a crowd of men, you wouldn't know who killed who. But the prospect never troubled me," Keating said in a March interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. He joined the IRA faction that opposed the 1921 peace treaty with Britain, and fought against former IRA colleagues in Ireland's 1922-23 civil war. He was eventually captured by Irish Free State forces and spent seven months in a prisoner-of-war camp. In a June 2006 interview, Keating said he considered Free State soldiers far more brutal than the British forces they both had fought against. "They were worse than the Black and Tans," he said, using the nickname of Britain's auxiliary troops used during the war of independence, "and they committed some awful atrocities. In one week they murdered 19 people — comrades I knew only too well. They were just gone overnight." He served several short terms in prison for insurrectionist activity, including an aborted assassination attempt of a former general of Free State forces, and participated in a 1939-40 IRA bombing campaign of London. Keating spent his entire adult life committed to the most hard-line branch of Irish republicanism on offer. He said Ireland should never be at peace until the border dividing the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland — both states he considered illegitimate — was eliminated and the island united under one government. In 1970, he switched his allegiance from the "Official" IRA to a new, Northern Ireland-based faction called the Provisional IRA that spent 27 years trying to overthrow the British territory. When the Provisionals called a 1997 cease-fire and supported Sinn Fein politicians' push for a negotiated settlement, he switched support to a breakaway faction, Republican Sinn Fein, that opposed compromise and backed IRA dissidents' continued bombings. He became honorary patron of the fringe party in 2004. Republican Sinn Fein president Ruairi O Bradaigh said Keating was committed to the cause "to the very day of his death and an inspiration to all true republicans." Keating opposed the existence of the Republic of Ireland so much that he refused to accept the state's old-age pension. In 2002 he also refused a $3,500 award from President Mary McAleese that is offered to all Irish citizens who reach age 100; Keating argued that she wasn't the real president of Ireland. Keating denounced the past 15 years' peacemaking efforts in Northern Ireland as "a joke." He appeared in a 2007 newspaper ad appealing to Sinn Fein not to begin cooperating with police, the step that preceded this year's rise of a new Catholic-Protestant administration in the British territory. Keating had no immediate survivors. He will be buried Friday in Killtallagh Cemetery, County Kerry, following a funeral Mass at St. Carthage's Catholic Church. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hf8Dv9Kf2AbqsSV-wlcrJ-iK8V1gD8S2M9AG1 BBC News: Irish Civil War veteran dies at 105 The last surviving IRA veteran of the Irish War of Independence and Civil War has died at the age of 105. Dan Keating died peacefully near his home in County Kerry. Diarmaid Fleming looks back on his life. Meeting the dapper Dan Keating, it could be difficult to reconcile the immaculately dressed man with his revolutionary past. Looking probably more like a fit 75-year-old rather than a man of 105 years of age, unless you knew his background, it could be hard to imagine the gentlemanly Dan as the last link to the revolutionary violence which gave birth to the modern Irish nation. But once the pleasantries of tea and brief discourse over the weather or Kerry's latest football 7victory were over, when visiting him at his home in Castlemaine near where he was born, the subject of politics was never far away. Eighty six years after the Irish War of Independence, while the mainstream republican movement had embraced compromise through power-sharing with unionists in Stormont, Dan Keating's views had changed little from the days he fought British forces in the hills and towns of Kerry. In a BBC interview in March, he said that a united Ireland remained his political goal: "You'll have no peace in Ireland until the people of the 32 counties of Ireland elect a government without interference from England." Dan Keating was born in 1902 on a small farm near in Castlemaine in County Kerry, the eldest of seven. His uncles were militants involved in attacks on English landlords' agents during land disputes in the 19th century. But he said that in his early youth, Kerry was peaceful until the 1916 Easter Rising. Relations with the large British military garrison in Tralee were good, where a soldier from Lancashire who enjoyed music was welcomed to sing in the local pubs. When one of Dan's own cousins who was in the British Army overstayed his home leave, two uncles were arrested after beating up a visiting military policeman inquiring as to his whereabouts. But the injured soldier refused to give evidence against the two Kerrymen, saving them from certain jail and earning the respect of locals. "He didn't want any trouble," said Dan. The execution of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising rapidly changed the atmosphere to one of hatred and war, he said. Working in a bar in Tralee, he joined the IRA youth wing, acting as an intelligence agent, and helping move weapons. He said it was a fervour of revolt and youthful excitement rather than political motivation which got him involved. "We were mad for it. It was the thing to do at the time. There was a wave and you got caught up with it. All the people you knew were involved," he said. He graduated to the IRA on turning 18, and took part in ambushes in which men from both his own and the British side died. He set up one ambush where several policemen were killed near his home, but would not be drawn on whether he himself had killed, saying he did not know in the fog of war. "When you are involved in an ambush with a crowd of men, you wouldn't know who killed who. "But the prospect never troubled me. You were fighting for a just cause and once you have that in the forefront, it never troubled you," he added. He said it was a war to the death for both sides. "You had to wipe the enemy off the face of the earth, that was your job to do." A truce with the British ended the War of Independence in 1921, but the treaty led to the partition of Ireland. The IRA fought on, with Dan on the losing side in the bitter Civil War against the Free State Army which followed immediately. He was to serve the first of several stretches in prison, interned in the Curragh Camp. While many IRA men left Ireland for good, unable to gain work in a land run by their civil war enemies, Dan stayed and got steady work as a barman. He remained active in the IRA in Kerry, and was part of an IRA squad which attempted to assassinate the Irish fascist leader Eoin O'Duffy on his way to a rally in Tralee in 1933. A disastrous plan by the IRA to cause sabotage in England during World War II - the S-Plan - brought Dan to England where he led the IRA in London, taking part in bombings of commercial premises and power-stations by night, while he worked as a barman in The Strand in London by day. Prison When detectives came knocking on his door, he told him the Dan Keating they were looking for had already left on a passing bus, and made it back to Ireland after giving them the slip. But more jail awaited on his return, with a second stretch in the Curragh internment camp. He left the IRA on his release, he said after a clear-out of the "old guard", and settled down with a new wife who was a regular visitor to him in prison - and who with no hint of irony he said was even more militant than himself. He continued to fundraise and help republican causes, even storing weapons in his house despite an unsuspecting near neighbour being a senior policeman. Working in the Comet Bar in Dublin's northside, he was an active trade unionist in the bar worker's union. A non-drinker until his 50s, he took his first drink after a row with the teetotal Pioneer Total Abstinence Association whose pin he had sported as a lifelong member. At a consultation meeting called by the government to relax pub opening hours, Dan was shocked when the teetotal organisation backed plans to lengthen pub opening hours in opposition to the barworkers' union. His response was typically militant. "I took the pin off and fired it at them. I walked out of the meeting with the union leader Walter Byrne, and both of us had a glass of sherry," he said. He retired back to Castlemaine after his wife died in the the late 1970s, but continued to visit Dublin for big gaelic football and hurling matches, attending over 150 All-Ireland finals in his lifetime, most likely a record. Walking several miles a day until just weeks before his death, he attributed his long life to moderation, never smoking, a good diet and lack of stress. And his secret for living to 105? "I always kept going and never worried about things. People should live their life and not worry about things, and if they have any favourite pastimes, they should keep at them," he said. Independent and fit, he travelled on his own by bus on a two-hour journey to Cork to the premiere of Ken Loach's film, the Wind that Shakes the Barley in 2006, meeting the British director afterwards to voice his approval in declaring the film as an accurate portrayal of the fighting he was involved in himself. While he only drank an occasional Benedictine brandy, and detested swearing, his recommendation of moderation did not apply to politics. He remained an unreconstructed militant, left Sinn Fein in 1986 when it voted to end its ban on taking seats in the Irish parliament, and became a patron of the breakaway Republican Sinn Fein. Irish President He said he refused to meet Irish President Mary McAleese to receive a cheque on his 100th birthday because of her declaration of a desire to invite the Queen to Ireland during her term of office, and attacked the Sinn Fein leadership for entering into power-sharing in Stormont this year. Shortly before his death, he said he did not mind that his views were in the minority. "We are passing through a phase, the youth of Ireland - all they want is a pay packet and a good time," he said. "I don't mind because I meet a lot of people who think the very same as me and we are very happy to be a minority. "We feel that we have a duty to hand it down to future generations," he said. His passing marks the end of the last direct link to the turbulent and violent birth of the modern Irish nation, as he was the last IRA veteran of the War of Independence. The muted response to his death of Irish politicians who would not have shared his politics would probably be, for Dan Keating, a fitting epitaph. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7026951.stm Irish Examiner: War of Independence veteran laid to rest 05/10/2007 - 16:29:30 Tributes were paid today at the funeral of the last survivor of the War of Independence. Dan Keating died aged 105 on Tuesday after a short illness and was laid to rest following a low-key service his native Kerry. Several hundred mourners attended the Requiem Mass at Kiltallagh Church. Born in Castlemaine in January 1902, he joined youth movement Fianna Eireann while in his teens and remained a steadfast hard-line republican throughout his life. In the War of Independence he fought in the IRA’s Kerry brigades against the Black and Tans. Keating, an IRA rifleman, was involved in two major attacks on the auxiliaries, at Castlemaine and Castleisland, where up to 12 British troops were killed along with several IRA men. Later he fought against the the Free State forces in the Civil War in Limerick and Tipperary. Keating was made patron of hard-line Republican Sinn Fein in 2002 and party president Ruairi O’Bradaigh paid tribute to him at the funeral. “During his long, healthy and adventurous lifetime, Dan has seen many splits and deviations from Republican principles, but he had remained loyal and true, and there is no more fitting recipient of this honour than this noble son of Kerry,” he said. In the early 1920s he was interned in Portlaoise jail and later in the Curragh. He was also jailed in the 1930s on several occasions and after joining the small-scale IRA sabotage campaign in England in 1939 he returned home and was again interned without trial at the Curragh 1940-44. In his last years he refused the €2,500 centenarians award over President Mary McAleese’s increasingly close relations with the British royal family. http://www.irishexaminer.com/breaking/index.aspx?c=ireland&jp=mhmhauidojkf