SF applauds hunger strikers as royal motorcade passes

A NUMBER of protests passed off without incident just over 100 metres from the English Market during Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Cork.

Members of Sinn Féin applauded at the moment she was exiting her car on the Grand Parade but they were quick to point out that the clapping was in honour of Bobby Sands and other hunger-strikers whose names were being sung by the band on the back of a lorry. They had struck up the song Joe McDonnell as the royal motorcade passed just 50 metres away from the protest on Sullivan’s Quay.

While members of the public lining the route of the official cars on South Mall and Grand Parade enjoyed the music of the army’s Band of the Southern Brigade, the Sinn Féin protest involved republican songs and descriptions of the burning of Cork by British forces in 1920.