Statement by the Communist Party of Ireland
2 September 2019
The Communist Party of Ireland strongly condemns the attack last night on the monument to Jim Gralton on the site of Gralton’s Pearse-Connolly Hall at Effernagh, Co. Leitrim.
Gralton was deported, without trial, in 1933. The monument was unveiled in September 2016 by President Michael D. Higgins.
The monument was daubed with paint and the word “Hitler” scrawled on it.
This is an outrage. Jim Gralton stood against fascism and worked all his life in the interests of workers and small farmers, both in Co. Leitrim and in the United States. Those forces who think they can intimidate the local activists who erected the monument and who keep the name and work of Jim Gralton alive in Co. Leitrim today are sorely mistaken. We will not be bullied, nor intimidated.
Once again around Europe we are witnessing the mobilising of the same dark forces of fascism that seek to intimidate and bully into silence those who oppose the system that constantly gives birth to them.
The Communist Party of Ireland calls upon the establishment political parties to condemn this act and the groups behind it.
