It is of immense importance that people in struggle, indeed all people, know where we come from. By knowing our history, we will learn how to write our future.

It has been my great privilege to have known and learned from a great many good men and women. I would like republicans of this time to know about them also.

This Léargas series of pamphlets, mostly adaptions of talks, lectures and speeches, is intended to give an insight into some of those men and women and to record the activism of those I came to know, or to know of, along life’s journey.

John Joe McGirl was a republican leader and activist for all of his adult life. From the 1930’s through to the 1980’s he gave five decades of selfless commitment to the struggle for Irish freedom and independence. He was the ‘unbreakable Fenian’, the ‘gentle soldier’.

Gerry Adams TD