I was just looking at all the media with their cameras focussed on the gate of Antrim barracks, waiting patiently for the great leader to make his long walk to freedom . I was reminded of that fateful morn when Mandela himself made that long walk, and the cameras waiting for him . The world waiting patiently to catch a glimpse of the great man of peace, the visionary of international stature. The personification of struggle and freedom .
And then Willy Frazer loomed into view, with the madness hanging out of him . Pointing at someone and shouting . His mates behind him with their union jacks going yeeooowww
Dignity is not here, I reflected.
I went to see a legend just the other night
At the Yankee Stadium, underneath the light.
I heard a man speaking after years and years in jail.
His name it was Mandela and he came to tell his tale.
The crowd they cheered him loudly, ah, but then the silence fell
As he spoke about the hard years in a South African cell.
And though he was free, his heart was feelin' the pain,
For his country and his people were still a part of that shame.
He said he hoped that we would join him and walk down freedom's path,
And these roads would be the hardest, oh, but they would be the last.
And to join our hands together so that we might be as one,
And to bring ourselves to the cause so his battle could be won.
I went home to bed that evening, went to sleep and I had a dream.
I was standing in the pouring rain, in an Irish field of green.
And all around the headstones were the martyrs of the past.
I stood there in silence, and they spoke to me at last.
Gerry Adams is my name and I spent a weekend in a cell...