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LAST UPDATE | 25 Feb 2025
DELIVERING A UNITED Ireland would be the “most fitting tribute” to former senior IRA man Brendan “Bik” McFarlane, mourners in Belfast heard at his funeral today.
The service for former senior IRA man Brendan “Bik” McFarlane took place in Belfast today, with a number of Sinn Féin TDs in attendance.
McFarlane, from the Ardoyne area of north Belfast, died in hospital on Friday at the age of 74 following a short illness. He was known for taking part in the biggest escape in UK prison history.
Crowds, which included former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, Donegal TD Pearse Doherty, Cavan Monaghan TD Matt Carthy and North Belfast MP John Finucane, gathered outside his family home off the Cliftonville Road for a burial service and blessing by priest Fr Gary Donegan.
Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly delivered a graveside oration at Milltown Cemetery this afternoon.
During the oration, Kelly recalled being on the run with McFarlane across Europe, and paid tribute to him for having been a key part of the planning of the “audacious escape”.
“It still sends shockwaves through the British government and was worldwide news,” he said.
Kelly added that as a teenager, McFarlane had intended to become a priest and entered a seminary in Wales, but returned home to Belfast at the start of the Troubles.
“He was determined to defend his community. He decided as many others did at the time that armed resistance was the only way to face an occupying military force,” he said, and described the early to mid-1970s as “the darkest years of the conflict”.
Kelly said McFarlane went on to “throw himself into local politics and community work” following his release from prison in 1997.
Mr Kelly went on: “Irish unity of course will not just happen. We need to make it happen, working together by continuing to put our shoulders to the wheel as Bik did all his life. We will finish the task ahead.
“We will achieve a united Ireland, a new republic for the rights and identity of all people living on this island of whatever persuasion or background will be welcomed. That will be the most fitting tribute we can give to our friend and comrade Bik McFarlane.”
McFarlane was the leader of IRA prisoners in the Maze prison during the 1981 hunger strike, when he was serving a life sentence for murder.
In 1976, he was sentenced for his role in the gun and bomb attack on the Bayardo Bar on the Shankill Road in Belfast. Five people were killed in the attack while 60 others were injured.
After his imprisonment, McFarlane also led a mass escape of 38 inmates from the Maze prison in 1983. He was later caught in the Netherlands.
In 2008, after a legal battle spanning ten years, McFarlane was cleared in Dublin’s Special Criminal Court of false imprisonment and firearms possession in relation to the 1983 kidnapping of businessman Don Tidey.
In her statement on Friday, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald described McFarlane as a “giant of Irish republicanism” and a “formidable, thoughtful leader”.
McDonald’s comments were heavily criticised by former Fine Gael Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan.
He told the Irish Times that her remarks “heaping praise on such a controversial figure demonstrates the distance between Sinn Féin and the acceptance of the rule of law”.
Flanagan added that McFarlane was “directly and heavily involved in vicious sectarian crimes”.
With reporting from Press Association
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