32 YEARS UNDER WATER…
….or ‘A SWIM FOR EVERY COUNTY!’
**My friend Sharon over at 1169 and Counting… asked if I would post this from their site, and I am more than happy to do so. Please do what you can, and also please stop by Sharon’s site to say hello and to get your daily dose of Irish republican history. It’s important now more than ever.
It began - properly structured and organised - in 1976,as a ‘fundraiser with a difference’ combined with the need to gain extra publicity for a situation which was then - as now - making world headlines. Those who sat down together in early September 1976 to tighten-up the then ‘hit-and-miss’ affair were a dedicated team who fully understood that to fail in their business would not only bring derision on them and the issue they sought to highlight, but would give their enemy a publicity coup which they would exploit to the fullest extent. With that in mind, the team persevered - favours were called-in, guarantees were secured, provisions obtained and word dispatched to like-minded individuals in the near-locale. At the appointed time on the agreed day - 12 Noon, Christmas Day 1976 - a soon-to-be 32-years-young event was ‘born’…
The CABHAIR Christmas Day Swim is, thankfully, still going strong and will be, as mentioned, 32-years-young on December 25th next!
Photographs of last years event can be viewed >>here and, if you can’t make it to the actual swim itself, you might consider posting a donation to the following address (please note that all monies raised go to the republican prisoners themselves and to their families - no expenses or admin fees etc are removed):
CABHAIR
Irish Republican Prisoners Dependants Fund
223 Parnell Street,
Dublin 1,
Ireland
Thank You,
Go Raibh Maith Agat,
Sharon
'So venceremos, beidh bua againn eigin lá eigin. Sealadaigh abú.'
--Bobby Sands