The following article by Lynda Walker was first published in Unity, the weekly paper of the Irish Communist Party.
SEAN Morrissey's Life and Times will be in the public eye again this year. Last year at the Madge Davison Memorial lecture Sinead Morrissey spoke about Sean her grandfather. Sean himself rarely looked to be in the limelight but his actions proved to be such that he was noticed for achievements.
One such time was in the Troubles, Sinead Morrissey writes "in 1969 on the 17th August, two days after a Loyalist mob entered Bombay Street and firebombed the houses one by one, a meeting of the (Catholic) Turf Lodge Residents' Association was called to discuss the response. My grandfather was Chair. The playwright Martin Lynch, attending with his father, never forgot it. "In the years since, I have tried to describe to people the atmosphere of that meeting but I'm not sure I've ever adequately done so. Fearing Turf Lodge would be next, "many of the angriest men there had murder in their hearts. A typical proposal was gave. This was when Sean Morrissey stood up to speak."
"Violence is no option. Murdering innocent people, probably including women and children, working class people like ourselves, is not the answer. This is exactly what the State forces would love to happen – the Catholic working man fighting the Protestant working man."
Over the next hour, my grandfather helped steer the assembly away from armed retaliation and towards patrolled and organised defence. "In the face of such anger in that hall," writes Lynch, "this was an incredible brave thing to do." The meeting came off the boil. Preaching solidarity across the barricades in August 1969 was not popular – would not be popular, even as an anodyne political aspiration, for a very long time. If anyone's new day had dawned in the early years of the Troubles, it was surely the IRA's, whose nationalist ideology Sean had long since rejected. Still, his behaviour at this meeting was his finest hour – full of pomp and self-importance, but correct. "Sean Morrissey's a good man," whispered Jimmy Lynch to his son. That night, and perhaps over more nights to come, people who could have been killed survived. (P.37/37. Sinead Morrissey 2026)
On Thursday 23rd July Sinead will be with us to when we launch a booklet with her presentation and also a YouTube made by NVTV. Interviews recorded in 2011 with a few of Madge's close friends speaking about her, will also be shown. It will be salutation to both Sean and Madge-who came from very different backgrounds but who found common ground in the fight for the people's rights and a better life for all. (LW)
It was me and another individual brought Sean to the ( lets say Republican meeting) The other individual is still alive and I am sure many of the other 30 plus people are also alive .
Sean made a clear distinction between nationalism , and Republicanism . Before 69 this distinction was black and white Sean also talked about the dangers of Fascism and how we should not use the term just as an insult. He explained that even splits in organisations were a dialectical consequence.
I took notes so did others . Sean seen my notes in later years.